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:. Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 12:16:03 AM EST

I am an Italian American. My roots are deep in an ancient soil, drenched by the Mediterranean sun, and watered by pure streams from snow capped mountains.

I am enriched by thousands of years of culture.

My hands are those of the mason, the artist, the man of the soil.

My thoughts have been recounted in the annals of Rome, the poetry of Virgil, the creations of Dante, and the philosophy of Benedetto Croce.

I am an Italian-American, and from my ancient world, I first spanned the seas to the New World. I am Cristoforo Colombo.

I am Giovanni Caboto known in American History as John Cabot, discoverer of the mainland of North America.

I am Amerigo Vespucci, who gave my name to the New World, America.

First to sail on the Great Lakes in 1679, founder of the territory that became the State of Illinois, colonizer of Louisiana and Arkansas, I am Enrico Tonti.

I am Filippo Mazzei friend of Thomas Jefferson, and my thesis on the equality of man was written into the Bill of Rights.

I am William Paca, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

I am an Italian-American; I financed the Northwest Expedition of George Rogers Clark and accompanied him through the lands that would become Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. I am Colonel Francesco Vigo.

I mapped the Pacific from Mexico to Alaska and to the Philippines, I am Alessandro Malaspina.

I am Giacomo Belinimi, discoverer of the source of the Mississippi River in 1823.

I created the Dome of the United States Capitol. They call me the Michelangelo of America. I am Constantino Brumidi.

In 1904, I founded in San Francisco, the Bank of Italy now known as the Bank of America, the largest financial institution in the world, I am A.P. Giannini.

I am Enrico Fermi, father of nuclear science in America.

I am Steve Geppi, founder of Diamond Comics, the largest distributorship of comics on the planet.

I am the first enlisted man to earn the Medal of Honor in World War II; I am John Basilone of New Jersey.

I am an Italian-American.

I am the million strong who served in America's armies and the tens of thousands whose names are enshrined in military cemeteries from Guadalcanal to the Rhine.

I am the steel maker in Pittsburgh, the grower in the Imperial Valley of California, the textile designer in Manhattan, the movie maker in Hollywood, the homemaker and the breadwinner in over 10,000 communities.

I am an American without stint or reservation, loving this land as only one who understands history, its agonies and its triumphs can love and serve it.

I will not be told that my contribution is any less nor my role not as worthy as that of any other American.

I will stand in support of this nation's freedom and protect against all foes.

My heritage has dedicated me to this nation. I am proud of my heritage, and I shall remain worthy of it.

I am an Italian-American!


:. Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 09:22:01 AM EST

Hello everybody! I've spent some time now working on a new design. I'm not totally sold on it, though. Take a look here:

http://www.backdrifts.net/new

So far, the homepage, which contains the blog, has not been implemented into the new design, yet. The rest of the sections are up and working, though. What do you think?

I know that frames are a big NO NO in web design, but I wanted to contain the whole site in a consistent size. However, now that I take a look around, especially in the photos section, I realize that frames just make everything flow horribly.

Any input? I'm at a loss...


:. Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 04:06:35 AM EST

Every now and then at late hours such as these, I find myself highly motivated and inspired to make little, neurotic changes to this website.

Tonight (or this morning, rather) I changed portions of the layout for "the latest" bar that sits at the right of the page. For one, the FAU owl logo and the Christmas Tree have been given drop-shadow effects. In addition, the titles "newest photos," "newest comments" and "newest writings" have been added to their respective sections of "the latest" bar. I felt it may not have been clear the intent of all of these links unless they were specifically labeled.

That's all that I changed here on the blog. However, web development/hosting services page underwent many changes. Most of my visitors out there have probably never seen this page before, although I put it up years ago. Even though I have a good job, I'd still like to make money on the side. Therefore, I'm trying to further promote this services page.

Anyway, that's that... I will end this post with a request for your opinion!

As you know, backdrifts.net has existed in some form since 2002. It has since seen many designs. The current one was created specifically to run on the 40 MHz SPARCstation, hence the minimalist layout.

So I ask... should I give this site a new look? A facelift very well may be in order here. I have a lot of great ideas for a new, sexy design. Best of all, this site has been 100% database-driven for years now, so implementing a new page and displaying all of the same information will be a breeze!

Hm... decisions, decisions...


:. Monday, November 16, 2009 at 03:42:17 AM EST

Incredible... It's been almost a year since George W. Bush has left the Oval Office. However, his legacy of Constitutional disregard, abuse of power and embarrassing moments of extreme difficulty with his native language (English) continues to live on.

While the many infractions of our former President George W. Bush, none of them make for a funny website, except one. With this idea in mind, I present to you: www.ThoseDamnBushisms.com!

I started working on this website Saturday night and, for all practical purposes, finished it a few hours ago. It's purpose is simple. The homepage displays a random "Bushism" quote along with buttons for showing a new quote and submitting one of your own.

I hope all of you out there laugh your asses off at these fabulous "Bushisms" as hard as I did putting them together!

PS: If you have a Reddit account, please upvote my new site! Also, I created a Facebook group for the site. Join it!


:. Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 09:48:06 PM EST

Bro rape is a rape that has gone over looked for decades, and its risen 44% in the last year, what is a bro?

A bro is 18-24 year old male who likes to play game cube and/or XBOX and listen to Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews Band. They love Natty Ice, wearing their Livestrong bracelet and Family Guy.

Their main scent is an...y of... the Axe Body Sprays. Usually their attire consists of Birkenstocks, rip jeans, an Abercrombie Water Polo and a hat with a prefrayyed brim. They use phrases like "bro-out" or "chill."

For every suburban house party 4 bros will be raped and only 1 in 7 bros will tell their boys what happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zvTRQr7ns8


:. Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 04:25:02 AM EST

I doubt this website actually has any readers anymore. Though, if you are reading this then I suppose you're one of those lucky few ;)

On to the point of this post: You may have noticed that I added a Winter Break countdown to the bottom of "the latest" tab on the right of the page. FAU's last day of classes before vacation is December 11th. So, if you're a fellow FAU'er, count down with me!

We can watch it count down to zero together, baby...


:. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 02:52:35 PM EST

This disgusts me in so many ways: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2009/10/09/pn.cop.shoots.homeowner.cnn

First of all, this story teaches us all that if you call the cops because someone has broken into your home, you may end up with SIX FUCKING SHOTS IN THE BACK!!

Fuck -- what a show of force! You can see in the video... that he repeatedly shouted, "I'm the homeowner!" while his wife and children witnessed their local "Boys in Blue" shoot him in the back 6 times.

So, aside from this "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude, there's another part to this story that is not being reported. The police shot him because they assumed he was the burglar and not the homeowner because he looked hispanic.

I live in suburbia, and these Arizona cops need to realize that hispanics are indeed living in suburbia and not just robbing it.

This scares the shit out of me, because one of these clueless cops may someday mistake me or a relative for a "hispanic" and shoot us dead after we call for their help. We're Italian and a cop clueless enough to shoot the homeowner rather than the burglar is definitely clueless enough to mistake some of us for hispanics.

Nobody is safe, it seems!


:. Wednesday, October 07, 2009 at 03:15:20 PM EST

Such a pertinent question, don't you agree?

To answer this, I have brought back an old feature I added to this site years ago. It first started at The Fifth HOPE conference in New York City in mid-July of 2004. I wrote a script using Perl that parses through a textfile containing the names of panels I planned to attend, along with their start and end times. The end result was an extra bit of text just below the menu in the top right portion of the page reading, "Which HOPE panel am I at?" with the name of the panel I was attending, if any.

I then got the idea to use this for my school schedule this semester, which began August 22nd. Although there is little practical use for this, you can now see a "Which class am I in?" link below the menu. Clicking on it opens a pop-up window with more information, along with a cute cartoon of what is supposed to be me sleeping in class.

Just the other day it came to me that this kind of information is the sort of thing Twitter is used for. So, I created a script to automatically send a notification to Twitter when each class begins. In this way, this simple bit of information became a lot more useful, as now my Twitter subscribers will know when I'm in class.

To subscribe to my Twitter feed, follow this link.


:. Sunday, August 16, 2009 at 09:46:35 PM EST

I found this old love letter while cleaning out my room the other day:

Derek, I love you.

You make me so happy, not just sometimes, but all the time.

I love the way you look at me, it makes me feel special.

When you talk to me, the rest of the world melts away and I feel like it's only me and you, nothing else matters.

When you touch me, it makes my heart race.

When you kiss me, you ignite feelings inside me that make me feel like bursting into 1000 pieces.

You make it okay for me to be wild, crazy, hyper, calm, sad, and most of all, myself.

... The walls are starting to crumble ...

Oh, the memories... 'Tis better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all ;)


:. Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 10:29:04 PM EST

I didn't really believe in luck until I took the Italian horn, il cornicello, off of my chain, leaving me to wear only my cross (Baptism present from grandparents) around my neck.

Before taking the horn off, I had never received a traffic ticket. Within a month and a half, I got 2.

On top of that, a string of other unnecessary and miserable moments has been goin' strong for quite some time now.

Tonight, I finally decided on put il cornicello, my horn, back on my chain. Why, you ask? Allow me to fill you in...

I opened my garage refrigerator in search of a drink just before dinner tonight when BAM! I was already on my knees looking through the bottom drawers, so the 1 lbs. can of tomatoes that fell from the top of the frdge onto my skull hurt twice as bad as it would have if I was standing up.

My family heard me cursing like a madman in the garage and quickly came to make sure I was okay. In fact, if it wasn't for my father wanting to see where the can hit, I wouldn't have immediately realized that I was heavily bleeding from the back of my head.

These are the only tales that I will recount for the sake of this note. The tickets and head wound are honestly enough for me, anyway!

Per buona fortuna, ho bisogno di indossare la mia collana colla croce e col cornicello! Niente è piu importante di questo...


:. Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 01:26:28 AM EST

To Nintendo's advertising staff,

I am writing to compliment your Wii "Punch-Out!" commercial featuring Paulie Malignaggi, the Italian-American junior welterweight boxer. He is unique in that he fights in the name of both the United States and Italy. Although he's American-born, his childhood spent in Syracuse, Sicily, Italy has left him with a unique love for both countries. This is a sentiment felt by not only I, an Italian-American, but my friends and family, too.

Boxing is as popular among Americans of Italian descent as any other ethnic group, but represents something special to the children and grandchildren of the brave immigrants of Italy. It's as if the boxing ring was a place where men not only secured their wins, but also their place in America's social pyramid.

Great Italian fighters like Rocky Marciano and Jake LaMotta were highly admired by both the people and press, giving Italian-Americans a sense of pride. To be frank, we take joy in knowing "one of our own" has hit the heights.

All of this considered, it is easy to see why we, with our roots planted deep in Italy's rich cultural soil, while our branches grow to the sky here in the Land of Opportunity, embrace our fighters. My heart is not only red, white and blue, but is also green, white and red, and both halves love Paulie Malignaggi.

Sincere thanks,
----- ----------

PS: My whole family has been playing and cherishing Nintendo games ever since the NES! We cannot thank you enough for your creative genius!


:. Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 06:21:43 PM EST

I'm a bit late in posting this, but I am currently at The Last HOPE computer hacker conference held by 2600, a quarterly hacker magazine, in the Hotel Pennsylvania. Just as every other year, I am having the greatest time of my life!

This conference is called the "last" because the future of the hotel where the conference is held is unknown. It is more than likely, though, that it will be demolished and replaced with boring office buildings. While another location is bound to be chosen eventually, it simply won't compare to the cheap room prices, central location and long-standing relationship with the hotel that 2600 has.

However, we are all living in the moment here and enjoying every single nanosecond of it. Just as at the last conference, I am responsible for the Segway track where I and other volunteers teach conference attendees how to ride.

It's pretty funny that I, the one here who took the worst spill on a Segway in conference history last night, am instructing others on the machine's operation. I don't blame the Segway's programming for my accident, since it was me who lifted his foot and caused the gyroscope to freak out. There really isn't any way for the machine to know if you're making a mistake with your movement or not. Too many false positives would arise if the company tried to implement a method of detection for such cases. Moral of the story: be careful!

Anyway, it's time to get back to this incredible conference. You can check the site at anytime in "the latest" sidebar to the right to see which panel I am currently attending.

PS: If you're at the conference, too, come and say "Hi" over at the Segways!

Update: This was not the last HOPE conference, after all. During the closing ceremonies, Emmanuel announced that the next hope would take place right there in the Hotel Pennsylvania in the summer of 2010! Keep hope alive... :)


:. Monday, June 23, 2008 at 12:10:05 PM EST

Yesterday, on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008, perhaps the greatest comedian of all time said his final farewell to this world at St. John's Hospital in Sana Monica, California. He was admitted during the afternoon for chest pains and died of heart failure later that day.

George Carlin is the undeniable king of wit and humor and has always been a special person to me. As soon as I was old enough for my father to play me his vinyl copy of AM & FM, I was addicted to Carlin's style. Not only does he deliver his jokes with unmatched eloquence and mastery, but those jokes are golden because all things aside, they tell the truth.

Classic one-liners, like, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that," are more than just funny; they're accurate! Carlin cites a basic mathematical principle to prove that his observation is indeed the right one. Therein, I feel, lies the key to his comedy. Although the angle from which he sees the world is not necessarily the most popular one, all who listen to him can relate because he simply tells it like it is.

Perhaps my favorite thing about George Carlin was his complete disregard for the concept of "taking a joke too far." In fact, his famous "Seven Dirty Words" bit prompted a landmark indecency case against the New York public FM radio station WBAI after they aired it in 1973. Those words, by the way, are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

At the end of it all, I would like to thank George Carlin, in whichever dimension or plane of existence he may now be, for his beautiful and truly unique contribution to this world. The ability to bring people together over a good laugh is invaluable.

This video of Carlin's stand-up routine on death probably best shows how he felt regarding our inevitable passing from this world. George's every word rings true, even on a subject like this, one that most people avoid discussing with their friends and family, let alone with an audience at a comedy show.

So long, George, and thank you :)


:. Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 09:18:29 PM EST

So the spam-prevention measures I've taken here at backdrifts.net have been 100% effective! You can imagine how proud I am ;)

In light of this, I have decided to add a blocked-spam-attempt count to the bottom of the site. So scroll all the way down to where you can see my server uptime and you will find this incredibly high count. At the time of writing this, it currently reads 7902! This number is updated each time that an evil spammer (or someone who can't do simple addition, see this post) is caught. If you click the "view IPs" link next to the count, you will be presented with a list of all the unique IP addresses recorded in my spam log. However, unlike the count, this list is only updated once a day.

To all of you who are technically apt, do what you will with the IPs listed in that file. I take absolutely no responsibility for the way in which the laws of karma are enforced!


:. Monday, May 12, 2008 at 10:37:17 PM EST

Comments on both my posts and my photos is constantly flooded with spam containing URLs for free bottles of Viagra and $50 PDFs that teach people how to make a million dollars without ever putting on pants and leaving their computer desk. However, all of that ends TODAY!

I have taken very basic spam-prevention measures in my comment scripts. I'm sure all of you have encountered those incredibly blurry and confusing images that contain a string of numbers and letters that you are supposed to identify before registering for an E-mail account or posting on a forum thread. Such annoyances exist to keep automated scripts from posting spam, much like the sort that has made its way to the humble and holy grounds of backdrifts.net.

The method I have chosen is extremely simple and very easy to circumvent. Taking such a path is quite atypical for me. Although, my website is not being uniquely targeted by spammers, thus the means by which I am keeping my comments clean is plenty sufficient.

From now on, you will be asked to enter the sum of a very basic addition problem of two random numbers between 1 and 5. Not too annoying, right? If I am mistaken in my assumption that my site is not being targeted specifically by spammers and the measures I have taken do not work, then I will certainly have to implement those pain-in-the-ass garbled images I mentioned before.

Until then, though, browse this site happily knowing those evil erection-pill-peddling spammers are at bay!


:. Friday, May 09, 2008 at 11:13:57 PM EST

Now that summer vacation is upon me, I have decided to begin the long, yet very fun, process of not only rewriting backdrifts.net, but adding many new features to it!

You may have noticed the new sidebar to the right entitled "the latest." This is a feature I first thought about a few months back after observing how most blogs these days have a navigation menu that allows visitors to quickly see the information that they are most likely interested in. Such a menu also serves as a way for visitors to sort through posts, pictures and more by category, date, etc. So far, "the latest" feed only displays three things: a link, as well as a preview thumbnail, to my latest photo album, a link to my newest piece of writing and the two newest comments on either a blog post or picture in a photo album, with links to both. Below the new menu is a link to the RSS feed which contains most of the information found in that menu along with a few extra things.

So, how do you all feel about it? Do you think the size is okay? Is the layout and organization appropriate and easy to understand? Any feedback by you, my loyal and ever-so charming visitors, is greatly appreciated. When developing and designing any kind of computer software, especially websites, the opinions of those whom the software is serving are quite important. To contact me regarding this, simply leave a comment on this post by clicking the "comment" link at the bottom. Then, watch as your new comment is shown on "the latest" menu! Alternatively, you can navigate your way to the contact page and send me an E-mail, if you prefer.

Two other additions have been made to the site, but they're not as significant as the new menu.

One is in the comment box for pictures in my photo albums, found in the pictures page. When viewing a picture's comments, a thumbnail of the picture is now displayed in the comment box itself. In addition, there is a "view larger" link which instantly displays a larger version of the photo, which alternates to "view smaller" to return to the original size. The purpose of this feature is to allow visitors to send a direct link to an individual picture's comment page that displays not only the comments, but the picture, too.

That may sound a bit confusing, so let me elaborate just a bit. Let's say that I want my friend Joe to see the comments on a photo of mine and then leave one himself. Before my new picture comment code was implemented, I'd have to link Joe to this page, where he must make the additional effort to click the "comments" link. However, now I can gracefully send Joe this link, where both visitor's comments and the picture itself of me at Disney World in 2005 being crushed by an Imperial Walker are displayed! To get a better look at the image, Joe can click "view larger," as I mentioned before. In order for Joe and others to share this comment page with their friends, all they have to do is copy the address of the "permalink" link found just above the thumbnail. Pretty nifty, right?

The final update made to my site can be found on each and every blog post. Just as I now give visitors the ability to send a "permalink," or permanent link, to a photo, I now have this feature available for posts. Visitors can now bookmark individual posts and even share links to them, instead of having to strenuously browse through my 200+ entries. The "permalink" link can be found at the bottom of a post, just to the right of the "comments" link. In actuality, I've had this on the site for quite some time, but it wasn't nearly obvious enough to be of any use. The titles of each blog post are in fact permanent links to that post. Even though I posted about this feature when I added it, I suspect that nobody was aware of it.

Phew, what a long post! I hope you got all of that ;) Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for more new features as I roll them out. I have to be determined this summer to revamp my little corner of cyberspace, just as I promise myself I will do every summer! This summer will be different, though! Mark my words...

Update: By the way, this is my 200th post here on backdrifts.net. I would like to thank all of my imaginary readers out there for whom I work endlessly to create the best website on the Internet.


:. Friday, May 02, 2008 at 06:18:36 PM EST

For the past five years, I have been a satisfied (as far as shitty cellular providers go) customer of Verizon Wireless. My father and I shared a pool of minutes, enjoying unlimited text messages as well as data transfer. Every month, his company paid his portion of the bill and I mine. However, his company no longer sees this arrangement as acceptable. As a result, I had to leave my father's family plan and add a line for myself on my mother's plan with AT&T.

As some of you may know, Verizon does not use SIM cards in its cellular phones, but instead has some sort of strange built-in activation method. That being the case, I have to admit I'm a little excited to be free to have a SIM card with AT&T that I can place in any unlocked model that I want to use. When opening my account with them, I chose a sexy little slider model: the Samsung a737.

This particular model is fully-featured and even includes sleek MP3 playing software that makes listening to music while operating the phone's other functions seamless. In fact, I like it so much that it is now my permanent portable music device! To make full use of the player, I transferred 1 GB worth of my favorite music to an extra MicroSD card I had lying around. My iPod died several months ago, but because I got it for free as part of a college student discount promotion, I have not been able to bring myself to dish out the couple hundred needed to replace it. Thus, I am very happy to have an MP3 player again. My only gripe is that I had to purchase a proprietary adapter in order to use headphones, but that's expected with consumer electronics.

Another thing I love about this phone is its Bluetooth capabilities, which, unlike Verizon, are not crippled in any way! I can send and receive files to and from other Bluetooth-enabled devices, like cellphones or computers. To most, this is not something to be excited about in the year 2008, but as a victim of Verizon's philosophy that its customers simply cannot handle Bluetooth technology, I indeed am excited.

The included web browser is also quite impressive. It far surpasses those on any previous phone I have owned, although it does not support Adobe Flash nor embedded video playback for any formats, except the proprietary one used on the subscription CellularVideo sites. Out of delight over my new portable web browsing abilities, I also updated my WAP page, which I encourage anyone to use on their own cellphones if they wish.

All in all, my new Samsung a737 is a beautiful little piece of technology that I am glad to own! It seems that my father's company's new pain-in-the-ass policies regarding its employees' cellular plans has worked in my favor. Maybe God doesn't entirely hate me, after all, hehe :P


:. Saturday, March 01, 2008 at 02:20:25 AM EST

We are interrupting your regularly scheduled interesting life to bring you this useless and borderline annoying information on the life of Mr. Derek Pascarella...

Hehe, now that I have your attention, I would like to say "hello" to all of you out there who, for reasons unbeknownst to me, still check this site every so often.

Not a whole lot has been going on these days in my personal life, but boy are we headed for some interesting times. The Ron Paul candidacy was so great for this country and has certainly gotten the snowball starting to down the hill. Undoubtably, this "snowball" will continue to get bigger and bigger as more join it.

As a matter of fact, I was present at the Ron Paul rallies, both the day before and the day of the Republican Debates at FAU, my university. You can see photos from the rallies here at the Meetup.com group page as well as YouTube videos here and here. I held up a sign that I put together in the parking lot across the street that read in big, bold letters, THE CONSTITUTION MATTERS!

In other news, I have just officially started my Spring break! I'm not really doing a whole lot, but I do know that I will use this free time to catch up on some calculus I've been slacking a bit on. Oh, joy...

And let's see... hm... during my last break from school, which was Winter break, I flew up to New York to visit my family. I had a great 10 days up there which I won't soon forget. My family has always been incredibly close to my heart. I come to appreciate and love them more and more. From that vacation, I have very few pictures, but the ones I do have are now available here.

So I guess that sums things up! You may resume... ;)


:. Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 12:31:10 AM EST

The Internet is an incredibly useful tool to one learning to speak a new language. This is true for two reasons.

Firstly, it offers the ability for a student of a new language to translate sentences in their native tongue via websites like Babel Fish.

The second component is that of the power to search websites written in the student's new language. Now, the output of the said translation program can be cross-referenced with the search engine results from sites like Google containing parts of the student's sentences with which they are confused.




The image above shows Babel Fish translating "the most beautiful in the world" to Italian as "il più bello nel mondo." As an advancing Italian student, one may question the use of "nel" in the translation. This is because the Italian language, as well as other Romance languages, uses the words "of the" ("del" in Italian) in this case rather than "in the" ("nel" in Italian).

So our result from the first of the Internet's two functions is in. Now it's time to do some of that fun cross-referencing I mentioned before!




Here we see that Google found 3 pages worth of pages containing the Italian sentence generated by Babel Fish. However, recall an advancing student's belief that "del" was more appropriate than "nel." Let's see what Google's results for "il più bello del mondo" turn up.




Mio, mio! 10 beats 3! If the frequency of a sentence's use on the web is any indicator of it's frequency among native speaking people (which it absolutely is), then, thanks to Google and Babel Fish, the most correct phrasing of a sentence in our test language, Italian, was found.

I love the Internet :)


:. Tuesday, December 18, 2007 at 12:50:00 AM EST

Lately... by which I mean the past 4 months... I haven't really posted around here. It's as if I lost my desire to express myself in what are essentially electronic journal entires. It's as if there's been a huge disconnect between mind and mouth.

Despite all of this, I brought back the Projects section back. Although, I removed all of the old articles and replaced them with links. Right now, these links go to various websites I have developed or am developing. I hope to add some code soon along with some artwork in the future.

Furthermore, I redesigned the Picture section to display each album with a thumbnail instead of just a list. Pretty pictures always help, right? :P

Until next time, this is Derek saying "Ciao a tutti."


:. Friday, November 30, 2007 at 12:48:45 AM EST

Confused about this post's title? Don't be ashamed. I mean, how are you supposed to know who Myu is?

For those of you who didn't follow the link above, I would like to present to you one website of many that I am working on. You see, I quit my job at the bookstore, where I worked for almost a year. I did this to devote my free time to something that I feel is not only very fun, but very worth my while... eventually.

As with any new business, the company I am starting with my partner, who shall remain nameless on my blog until further notice, things are s l o o w w...

So about that website I promised a paragraph or two up: www.MyuMusic.com!

Myu is the name of a rapper whose site I am currently developing. Please excuse the design thus far. I see myself as more of an engineer than an designer when it comes to these things.

Anyway, check out that site from time to time. New things will be popping up soon!

Also, Myu's new album, called "Hurricane Season," is available for downloaded off his website absolutely free!

Enjoy, my friends :)


:. Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 12:45:23 PM EST

This past Saturday night, my favorite group of brothers in the world (Piom, Omid and Amir) invited me to a Halloween party. But not just any Halloween party... An out-of-this-world Iranian Halloween party at Darius Palace.

Now, I'm pretty sure Iranians don't celebrate Halloween in their home country, but the ones living here in the U.S. sure do. Everyone at this festa, with the exception of me and a few friends, was Iranian. I didn't feel too out of place or anything, since everyone was very warm and friendly. Eventually, thanks to the open bar, I too became warm and friendly. And that's when it all started...

To the right you can see me in my costume for the evening. I decided to go as Christopher from The Sopranos. I was decked out with the jacket, pants, excessive jewelry, sunglasses, accent and all. I can't imagine how it looked to everyone there when the modern-day-mobster came to the dance floor and started breaking it down. It may not looked too peculiar, considering there were vampires, popes and catwomen on the floor, too. However, I would place a high bet saying that nobody -- and I mean NOBODY -- danced like I did.

The music that the DJ played all night was Iranian, of course. But it was dance music, most importantly. After a while of watching the other party guests groove to the beats, I decided that I could dance like them, too. Maybe this was a sudden burst of confidence, proof that my years of overpriced therapy are finally paying off (haha, I'm kidding), though I think the open bar I mentioned earlier had more to do with it.

Once the party DVD comes out, I'll be sure to post videos on here of my moves!

Update: Photos from the party are not available in my pictures section! Click here to check them out, or click on the picture of that guido up there!


:. Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 08:31:02 PM EST

When I look back on my high school years, quite a few things come to mind. However, of all these things, one of them certainly is not my popularity. Although I was adored by those who knew me (hehe), I usually kept to myself. My sister, on the other hand, somehow managed to procure the genetic material from our parents that enabled her to be a social butterfly. As a matter of fact, she isn't just A social buttefly, she is THE social butterfly!

Loved by all who gaze upon her, I present to you, my loyal readers, my sister, Kylee, the 2007 Spanish River High Homecoming Queen.



If you click the beautiful picture of Kylee and me above, you will see all of the photographs from yesterday evening.

You know... she'll probably be crowned Prom Queen, too!


:. Sunday, August 26, 2007 at 05:06:54 PM EST

For nearly as long as I can remember, I have dreaded the last day of summer. It has always been the middle ground between a world of free time and relaxation and a world of stress and annoyance. However, once the year got itself started up a bit, times were good.

Today, I am not in misery over the summer vacation that is just about ready to pack up and leave (until next year). Instead, I have an optimistic view on my studies this year. Not only am I determined to work hard and exceed as much as possible, but the thought of making new friends and meeting new people delights me. I have spent far too long with poisonous people who have done little good for me. While they were once gold, their demons got the best of them. They wore out their welcomes and the "goodbyes" haven't been easy. It's time to build things up again.

With a strong focus on the positive, I have faith that this life can be beautiful.

"Paura non avere."


:. Sunday, August 05, 2007 at 11:38:38 PM EST

Ah, yes, the cry of many a drunken people, or any other inebriation, for that matter...

How many times have you come home after a night of drinking to find yourself IM'ing ex-girlfriends or leaving embarrassing comments on your crush's Facebook profile? You shall suffer this shame no more. I present ImReallyFuckedUp.com, my latest project!

I have been working on this new site for almost two months now, as some of you may now. Of course, I haven't been working day and night. If that were the case, it'd have been finished in a few hours. However, lately, I've found my inspiration to come and go. I suppose that's normal. Either way, I am very happy to have finally finished ImReallyFuckedUp.com.

So, everyone... next time you're under the influence of the intoxicant of your choice, hop on your computer and visit ImReallyFuckedUp.com! It's the best place to let out your ramblings or even confessions!

PS: Wouldn't it have been funny if I had ACTUALLY linked the text, "crush's Facebook profile," above to my crush's profile? Devoid of all class and hardly subtle. That ain't me... ;)


:. Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 12:04:02 AM EST

I apologize for my blunt title there, but hey -- I've got no better way to say it! So, that being said, I suppose I'm not actually sorry. Moving along...

I saw my favorite singer of all time live tonight, who I hold in higher regard than even Billy Joel. The Mizner Park Amphitheater was an interesting venue for his type of shows. You see, Morrissey fans are unlike any other fans in the world. They love him. They long for him. They obsess over him night and day. They are indeed crazed. For this reason, the security staff at the theater had a very difficult time containing the crowd. Instead of all of the us staying in our seats, which we deemed too far away from "the man," we rushed the stage. So, I guess one could say that the security staff didn't so much experience difficulty, but more of a failure. I, and the millions singing, cheering, and clapping along with me could not be happier about that failure.

It's hard for me to explain how I feel about this music, but those of you who know me personally understand.

Below are the only two photos I snapped all night, using my cellphone, nonetheless.





Update: The following is the complete set list from the show:

The Queen Is Dead
The Last Of The Famous International Playboys
In The Future When All's Well
You Have Killed Me
Disappointed
The National Front Disco
Let Me Kiss You
Girlfriend In A Coma
Everyday Is Like Sunday
All You Need Is Me
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
First Of The Gang To Die
I Will See You In Far Off Places
That's How People Grow Up
Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
Irish Blood, English Heart
At Last I Am Born
I Just Want To See The Boy Happy
Life Is A Pigsty
How Soon Is Now?
You're Gonna' Need Someone On Your Side


:. Saturday, July 14, 2007 at 03:44:36 AM EST

Tomorrow, I see him. Tomorrow I meet God.



8 PM EST is when the bell tolls.


:. Saturday, July 07, 2007 at 01:03:04 AM EST

Two posts ago I linked to some new photo albums from the site. Somehow, though, I forgot to followup with my very beautiful and cool pictures from the Florida Keys!

So... here they are!!!


:. Monday, July 02, 2007 at 01:40:01 PM EST

So I'm stopped at a restaurant on the way home from the fine Florida Keys. I had a really great time, even though I didn't end up parasailing. Instead, I spent my time relaxing by the pool, something I hardly ever do at home, where there are pools-a-plenty. Why, you ask?

You see, I used my time alone to become more comfortable with myself. It was nothing more than me, my thoughts, and the water. The resort used salt to treat their pool, so I was always floating. Head back, feet up and mind clear was how I ended up after each glorious swim at Tranquility Bay :)

Time to pile in the car. Bye for now!

PS: I wrote this post on my cell, by the way.


:. Friday, June 29, 2007 at 05:10:39 PM EST

It's been almost two whole months since my last post on here. I keep promising myself I'll write more on good ol' backdrifts.net, yet I can never seem to follow through with it. However, today is different... For today -- I have something to write about!

You see, I'm down in the Florida Keys this weekend with my family celebrating my mother's birthday. We're staying in the beautiful Tranquility Bay where the view is simply fantastic. I'm sure we're all going to have a wonderful time out here. The Keys have yet to let me down in all of my 19 years. But there's one thing that I have yet to try down here, and that's parasailing! I have a slight fear of heights, but I think I can man up just this once. I'll post pictures on here if I end up doing it.

Anyway, there's not much more I can say about this weekend, as it has yet to really start. However, there are quite a few things of significance that have happened lately that I have yet to share with all of you loyal readers. I documented all of these events with my camera, of course:

• I saw the Roger Waters show on May 18th at the Sound Advice Amphitheatre.


• I installed the WiiKey modchip on my Nintendo Wii, so now I can download and burn games instead of paying for them :)


• I attended the 30th anniversary of the Morikami Museum.

So as you can see, my life has been fairly busy lately. I hope you all enjoy looking through my photos, because I sure had fun taking them (except the Wii modchip ones -- those were a pain).


:. Monday, May 07, 2007 at 03:28:09 PM EST

It's been over a week since my web server was moved into my living room. Since then, I've acquired another box, which I happily installed OpenBSD on. My love for OpenBSD goes way back to the early days of my initial Open Source adventures, where I first used it to host this website 3 years ago. Somewhere in the last year or so that original server died and so I replaced it with a Slackware machine. I'm going to stick by Slackware for my web server needs, but I cannot abandon OpenBSD!

As a result, I have outfitted that new box to be a gateway, of sorts, for the outside Internet to reach my internal network. Now, the machine isn't acting as a gateway in the traditional network sense by any means. Instead, via NFS, it handles access to the files on my workstation and web server through one convenient web interface. I also have all SSH'ing done through hopping from that box to the others. What this ultimately does is gets rid of all of the excessive ports I had open to allow for all these various kinds of access. Not only that, but now the world's most secure operating system (only 2 remote holes in over 10 years!) is dealing with my most sensitive remote connections and data. It's quite the clever idea, if I do say so myself.

Eventually I want to setup the OpenBSD computer as a full gateway/firewall, with NAT, packet filtering, and the works. Perhaps my summer vacation will give me the time needed. Let's hope, because we all know I haven't had fun with my computers in too long...


:. Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 04:18:54 PM EST

I remember the 2005 hurricane season during which Hurricane Wilma knocked out the electricity in my area for almost a week. I remember the joy in living life unplugged. I remember the beautiful silence I slept in night after night. I want that silence back, for it is the natural serenity that my life was meant for. What can I do to get back to that, you ask? Backdrift Networks, the little name I give to my own spot on the net, is going to be moving. That's right! The noisy buzz of my servers will no longer be able to invade my ears. I know what you're thinking: Derek -- a co-location of your network isn't worth it -- you have no readers. Well, the first half of my response is, "I'm working on the reader thing." The second half is, "Shut up. I'm only moving the network into my living room where nobody sleeps! I'm not dishing out the cash for some expensive co-lo."

So with my servers, DSL modem, and router in my living room, how will my own workstation access the Internet? WiFi, baby! I was very skeptical, at first, about using a wireless network card for my net access. Wireless issues make up nearly a fifth of all computer problems I deal with, whether it be for friends, clients (back when I did independent computer work), or even my own family. To see if I could count on the good ol' 802.11g standard, I dug around for a D-Link wireless USB dongle I had lying around. Unfortunately, many hardware vendors do not open the specifications of their product to the driver developers of Linux. This leaves users of open source software, like myself, shit-out-of-luck quite often. However, because of the NdisWrapper project, I was able to get the device working with the Windows drivers without hassle. NdisWrapper allows one to load a Windows driver into a wrapper which can be loaded into the Linux kernel like any other module. I have absolutely no issues with accuracy in reporting my link statistics and my connection has yet to drop. As a result, all sings point to the network move!

Is it strange that I'm so excited and impatient about this move? :-P

Update: Here is a patch I wrote for GKrellM's wireless plugin. As my post states, I recently started using WiFi on my desktop. I was unhappy with the way the plugin displayed my wireless link quality, but thanks to the wonders of open source, I changed it! Maybe someone, someday, will get use out of this, aside from me.

Update 2: I ditched the D-Link for a far better Linksys WUSB54G. My range is much better now!

Update 3: So it's back to the D-Link! The Linksys just didn't mesh well with Ndiswrapper. If I lost my wireless connection, the driver would freeze. Let's hope for better luck with the D-Link.


:. Friday, April 06, 2007 at 03:39:00 PM EST

I've known for almost ten years that my eventual career would land somewhere with computers. I had a blast when I first picked up programming and thought that I'd surely write software for a living one day. As I grew older, my interests in computers broadened to networking and even a little bit of web design. I started to adopt the idea that, of all the newly graduated job hunters out there, there is no way that, when the time came, I'd have the skills needed to get the attention of a software development company. While that notion is in part due to a pure lack of self-confidence, it was also the result of a certain fear I had of learning new programming concepts. Now that I am enrolled in a programming course at my university, I am forced to keep up with new material so I can maintain good grades. To my pleasant surprise, I am understanding everything that is being thrown at me. Because of this, I have decided that a job as a programmer is definitely for me. Computer software and the overall processes behind it seem to always be the first thing that comes to mind in terms of "computers." It seems only natural!

So now that I've set out a goal for myself, college will inevitably be a little less confusing. Or, perhaps, it will be even MORE confusing? What do you think? I'm leaning towards the former :-)

To those of you out there who have also recently started college, I hope you can find something that interests you enough to be a career choice. Don't worry, it will come. Just keep your mind open and your spirits up. When is the last time you heard of somebody getting their bachelor's degree and then sitting on their ass for the rest of their life, jobless?


:. Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 09:43:34 AM EST

Yes, it's true, and it's all thanks to Beryl. Many of you are familiar with the very attractive effects found on Apple desktops and in Microsoft's latest disaster, Vista. However, the open source implementation of this concept of a desktop capable of rendering windows with 3D acceleration has surpassed its commercial equivalences by leaps and bounds.

First of all, Beryl offers worlds of customization that, frankly, neither Microsoft nor Apple provides its users with. With Beryl, I'm able to modify every aspect of how windows are handled. This means I can make windows minimize and restore with any of the 10+ effects included. It also means I can setup virtual desktops that are browsable via a 3D cube with the dimensions and looks of my choosing. I can even have TRUE transparency on my terminals instead of the background-only attempts of the past. There is just so much that Beryl opens up to its users that I can hardly pick a single thing and talk about it! It's just that amazing...


The above video is just a tiny, tiny example of what Beryl is capable of. If you're interested in the full power of this open source project, I suggest that you either try it out on your own Linux desktop, or if you don't have a Linux desktop, at least browse YouTube for more videos of this terrific window/composite manager. Personally, I am using Berly on top of GNOME under Ubuntu. Though, Beryl can run on top of any window manager under any distribution. Best of all, even a 32 MB on-board video card is capable of handling its small load!

Do you see now why I'd rather stare at my LCD screen than your girlfriend? Good.


:. Monday, January 29, 2007 at 06:25:25 PM EST

As some of you may have gathered from the screenshot in my last post, I am not using the GNOME window manager under Ubuntu on my new laptop. After some customization of the interface, I found myself ultimately unhappy with the selection of GDM (GNOME's login manager) themes available from such sites as GNOME-Look. Thus, I've put together my own!

Any GNOME users out there? Check it out at http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=52340. I gave it the name "Logged-In-Translation."


:. Monday, January 22, 2007 at 04:22:46 PM EST

Christmas time has come and gone, and not a single post on here as of yet to tell about it! As you can tell, I haven't really been putting as much into this site as I certainly should be. My last post was just over two months ago... bugger... Come to think of it, though, I have added a few things to the guts of this site. For instance, the class I'm in at school, if any, is display for its duration just below the main menu in the top right. That was the product of boredom in my sociology class.

As far as the recently-passed holiday goes, things went well. For pictures from Christmas, click here.

Following noel came the welcome of a brand new year: 2007! I have pictures from that, too. I've been using my camera more often, can't you tell?

I got some cool presents as usual. The best of these is my new Dell Inspiron e1405. After some trouble with the 2.4 kernel's lack of proper fan and processor-throttling support for the model, I decided to give Ubuntu a try. People have suggested I give it a whirl ever since it was first released. Though I always figured I'd have no use of a Linux distribution as automated and, dare I say babyish as Ubuntu. Boy was I wrong...

The Ubuntu installer disc doubles as a live CD that you can boot up at anytime to use an on-the-spot Linux desktop with the most common and useful application. It automatically setup the wireless card, hotkeys, media buttons, CPU throttling, fan speed throttling, harddrive performance throttling, CD burner and all other hardware. The only two problems I've encountered are getting the built-in BlueTooth adapter to run, and the need for the package 915resolution to be installed in order to get every pixel I paid for. I'm quite impressed with not only how easy it was to get Ubuntu up and running, but how easy and seamless maintaining the system. All package management occurs through Synapitc, a terrific frontend to Debian's outstanding apt system. No wonder they call it "Linux for human beings."

All of that being said, my loyalty still lies with the worlds first and greatest Linux distribution, Slackware. While the rest may offer my ease of use, Slack gives me what I really crave in a desktop operating system; control.

Update: I got this neat Linux sticker in the mail today and decided to customize it a bit to fit my laptop. Here's a photo, tell me what you think!


:. Tuesday, November 21, 2006 at 05:38:46 PM EST

About a month ago, I woke up bright and early to wait in line outside of my local Electronic Boutique to pre-order Nintendo's new, motion-sensing beauty... the Wii.

Nintendo has a way of wielding revolutionary video-game-magic that their competitors, like Microsoft and those scumbags at Sony, certainly do not. Those latter two companies are still stuck in the never-ending-graphic-card-enhancing trend, ignoring the need to tread new ground on the frontier of innovation. The success of Nintendo's latest hand-held, the DS, is proof of that. With the release of the Wii three days ago (which I am EXTREMELY happy to own), I find a charm in each and every game that I haven't felt since The Dreamcast 7 years ago.

I really would like to save your eyes from my ramblings on about how badass the Wii is, especially since there already exists tons of information on the net already. I'll instead leave you with a photo of my Mii. Mii's are characters that players create for use in certain games, like Wii Sports, or to just have hang out in the Mii Channel while you're sleeping!



Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually 19 years old...


:. Monday, October 02, 2006 at 05:01:13 PM EST

For those of you who weren't pestered by birthday notifications on Facebook and MySpace, here's some news for you: I'm 19 years old today! You know, it's a shame, being 19 doesn't feel all that great. My 18th year was my best -- hands down. I'm sure a year from now, when I turn 20, I'll be swearing that my 19th year was the best, as well. That's why we're all still living, heh.

Oh, and we're also still living because of night's like these (this is me, give it a bit to load):



That was a lot of fun to do, and I can't believe all here in my videotape...

This is one for the good old days...


:. Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 09:37:51 PM EST

Well, maybe a little...

It's been so damn long since I've posted on here. I feel like I sort of forgot how to write about my life. This post is in no way a "comeback," as I plan on doing nothing more but giving you all a few updates.

After my last post, the HOPE conference had just ended. From there I went back home and had fun for the little bit of summer vacation that remained. I've started college at FAU, now, which is somewhat exciting. FAU is considered a "commuter's school," so I don't really feel that sense of starting a new part of my life just yet. Hopefully that comes with time, though. Oh, and for the rest of you college-go'ers, I also setup a Facebook account, so you can check me out on there, too. I actually quite like Facebook; It has a very fast and intuitive interface, great features, and none of the annoyances that I've come to loathe from MySpace.

Aside from education, I've finally gotten off my ass about getting a job... sort of. I have an application, all filled out, sitting on my dresser for Waldenbooks, a Borders affiliated bookstore in my local mall. Now that my car is almost ready for driving, I'll need an income to support gas and such. Let's all hope I get that job! Dealing with food or clothes would suck -- books rule.

Anyway, now that I've finally made my first step in writing on here again, posts should be more frequent, more profound, and hopefully better put together.

Adios!


:. Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 10:37:24 PM EST

So this year's HOPE conference is over, and I can say that surely it was the best ever. The Segways were among many things that brought it up to that status, so playing a key role in giving people rides on it and teaching people how it works made me feel great. These conferences are all about sharing information and ideas and getting them out there for people to learn about experiment with. Taking the Segways, which are typically seen as toys for the rich, and opening them up to all of the attendees who would otherwise never have had a chance to ride on them, followed that spirit to a tee. During the closing ceremonies, I was asked to come to the mic and say a few words about all of that, and I think I handled myself pretty well. I'll have DVDs of all of the action soon enough, so I'll post that video when I'm done uplaoding it. In the meantime, you can check out the three new photo albums I posted.

New York 2006

Niagra Falls 2006

HOPE Number Six 2006

Oh, so you noticed that one of those albums is from Niagra Falls? I was there just this morning on my way to Pennsylvania. The whole experience was somewhat a bummer because I had a really bad cold, which I'm still fighting. Three tissue boxes, two vitamin C tablets, and a whole bunch of my grandmother's experimental homeopathic drugs later, I'm getting a little better.

I'll be here in Pennsylvania until the 31st, when I'll be making my final trip back home. I can't say I don't miss sunny South Florida...


:. Friday, July 21, 2006 at 07:37:27 PM EST

I arrived at the Hotel Pennsylvania Friday morning at around 10:30. Setup had only just started when I showed up, so I jumped right in. My arms are soar as hell from all of the lifting, moving, and sign-hanging I've been doing. This year, I've helped out a whole lot, and it feels good. Being in this environment reminds me of the power of the people, and how when hackers work together, almost anything is possible. I reall don't have much time to go into detail on what's been going on, but I will leave you all with a somewhat blurry picture of me on the main conference floor with my very own G.R.L. LED...



Oh, and I almost forgot, me and a few others are in charge of the first-ever Segway station at HOPE. I've been having a blast riding them around and teaching others to "trust the machine", haha. Check back for more updates if these sort of useless posts spark your interest!

Update: I added a new feature to the site for the conference! At the top right of the page, just under the menu, the current panel I'm visiting, assuming I'm actually AT a panel, is now displayed!


:. Monday, July 17, 2006 at 08:41:43 PM EST

Up here in New York, everyone makes huge deals out of a girl's 16th birthday. Auditoriums are rented out, DJs are hired, and everything shines. Last night, my cousin Courtney had her party, where fun was had by all! The wine was sweet that evening, as is evident by certain pictures of me, haha.



For some reason, I got a real kick out being dressed up last night, and also seeing all of my relatives looking their best, too. Everyone was looking good, especially a select few of my cousin's friends ;) Stark age differences kept me away, though.

Anyway, you can click on the photograph of my dad, my sister and me above to be see all of the pictures from last night, if you so desire. My vacation is going well, though nothing of significance is really happening until HOPE next week. Keep your eyes peeled for live updates from the conference!


:. Friday, July 14, 2006 at 03:25:57 AM EST

Just an hour after my last post, I began my very long trek with my cousin and my dad to our friend Franky's house in the mountains in upstate New York. For those of you too lazy to check back at the time of my last post, it was 4:55 AM, meaning I was out of here by about 6 AM. This was done in order to beat rush hour traffic. Since we had to leave so early in the morning, both me and my cousin decided to simply not go to bed the night before, which totally threw off my first day upstate. I was pretty groggy, but a good night's sleep cured me right up. By day, my cousin and I rode four-wheelers around Franky's 26 acres of beautiful land. By night, we watched my Seinfeld DVDs and attempted to kill time. Since it's technically Friday morning night now, I have to say that yesterday (Thursday) was our last day up there, which we spent at the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Cooperstown. Cooperstown was great, even though I'm not that big of a baseball fan these days. A part of me still has an undying love for the game, and that part loved taking in the sights of the museum, especially anything from the 1960s and prior. Oh, not to mention I had a little fun at the negro league display, and with a wax dummy of George W. Bush. Come one, it's funny...

I've added two new photo albums to the site from my three-day stay upstate, so check them out!

Upstate New York 2006

National Baseball Hall Of Fame 2006

So far, my trip here in New York is going great. Being upstate in the mountains where space is open and skies are clear has surely refreshed me. I can still smell that crisp country air :)


:. Tuesday, July 11, 2006 at 04:55:39 AM EST

I'm glad you asked. I'm in New York, of course. I flew in this past Friday, the 7th, to start my three week stay in The Big Apple. I've been spending nearly all of my time here with my cousin, as per usual. However, I took a trip Sunday to Long Island to spend a couple of days with my friend Emmanuel. You may know him as the editor and founder of everyone's favorite hacker magazine, 2600.

Now, I've made the trip from my cousin's house here in Staten Island to Manhattan on my own before by way of the train and ferry, but never have I ventured any further from there on my own. My plan was to arrive in the city, take the subway to Penn Station, and from there take the Long Island Rail Road to Emmanuel's town. Because I seem to be predestined for doom, the subway train I was supposed to take (the 1 train) was being serviced Sunday, so I was forced to figure out an alternate route to the train station. I did just that -- and on my own, too. I still feel quite proud of myself for doing so, since most people, even full-grown adults, consider navigating New York City an impossible task. Walking down those city streets gave me a feeling of independence, which may have been unwarranted, though I don't care much. I would say that the hardest part of my trek was figuring out the schedules in Penn Station. I quickly did, though, and boarded a train where I met a married couple about the same age as my parents. We ended up talking for the entire hour-long ride, often about things that actually stimulated parts of my brain! Just out of coincidence, their son was also about to start college and is majoring in computer science, just like me. They told me he's even gotten really serious with his girlfriend who just happens to be an orthodox Jew. Too many similarities for one train ride, I say.

Most of my time with Emmanuel was spent at his house listening to music, watching all sorts of funny British television shows, and talking about whatever came to us. On Monday, though, we went into the city for dinner and the like, taking the Smart Car, of course. I don't think I'll ever get over the finger-pointing and smiles given by all those that we pass in that little automobile. If you're not sure why people would smile or point their fingers, just follow the link to the Smart site and check the car out for yourself.

Anyway, my stay was a lot of fun, leaving my head clear and seemingly "refreshing" my sense of direction in this crazy life I lead. Stays with Emmanuel always seem to do that.

I've been taking some photos while up here, so when I get a chance I'll share them on here. I'm sure most of the interesting pictures will be from the HOPE conference taking place on the 21st through the 23rd. Each day is precious and should be appreciated and lived to its fullest, though I really do hope they pass quickly. I can't wait for the damn conference!


:. Monday, July 03, 2006 at 01:51:13 AM EST

So a cool mosaic comprised of a collection of Digg user icons depicting a Diggnation photograph is currently being featured on Digg's front page. Tons of users are "digging" this story, which currently has 262 "diggs", which are growing very fast. In the mosaic, I immediately spotted my familiar image. Here it is in the mosiac in all of its Internet-history glory...



You can click on this image for a clearer and enlarged version. Also, if you're interested, here is the picture prior to me modifying it to point out my icon. Did I waste your time? Sure hope not :P


:. Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 02:48:40 PM EST

As previously mentioned, I recently got a new Motorola E815 from my wireless provider, Verizon. Because I can never just own any sort of technology and leave it "as is", I had to order a USB cable for my model and mess around. While there are many alterations one can make with this cable and the proper software, I only added two new things to my phone.



So, as you can see, I now have web browsing enabled on my phone, and the best part is that it's FREE! In case it's not too clear what the picture on the right is showing, I'll clarify; The outside LCD screen now displays the message, "STOP LOOKING!", when I'm making a phone call. I figure that this will keep away all of those annoying folks who like to stare at me while I'm on the phone, not that there are very many of them or anything...

Now that my life consists of only computers, video games, music, and anime again, I'm pretty sure I'll start taking on more projects, most of which I hope will be deeper than just my cellphone. If that's the case, then all of my readers out there sure are lucky. Haha, yeah right :P


:. Friday, June 02, 2006 at 06:13:18 PM EST

Summer's here and the time is right for losing a few pounds... of hair. Check it out!



I'm glad I actually like it. I picked up some hairwax, too, since my head is full of ridiculous cowlicks. Hopefully I can maintain my baller status without that trendy hairdo!

Update: So I changed the photo up there to something less... ridiculous :P


:. Sunday, May 28, 2006 at 04:45:50 PM EST

After two years of loyal and overall-pleasant service under a Verizon contract, I was finally eligible for my new cellphone this past Friday. Verizon, as a wireless provider, is known for having really great service (I could make calls during 2005's hurricanes), but a dull selection of phones. I prefer utility over aesthetics in this case, so I'm fine with my plan. Not only that, but I managed to stumble on quite the impressive little model at their kiosk in the mall: The Motorola E815. I'm not going to go off on all of the things this phone is capable of. If you're interested, you'll follow that link, so why should I bother :-P

Here's what she looks like...



I really did need a new phone... I mean, I was using a strand of tin foil as my antenna for God's sake! Oh, and if you want, send my phone an E-mail at mobile@backdrifts.net.

P.S: Shit, I almost forget -- I also graduated from high school! Will my future suck? I hope not, ha.


:. Saturday, April 15, 2006 at 04:02:58 AM EST

It's surely been a while since my last real post. Life has been a trip lately... you know, an absolute headfuck. I'm not very excited about graduation, even though my weeks spent at school are almost at an end. I'm sure once the day to say goodbye to high school one last time is imminent, my feelings will change. I can't predict any of that. Life comes to me as it pleases, and I'm here with open arms.

Not too much excitement has shown its face my way in a while. However, I have been spending my nights and evenings with my best friends. I can't let the sound of my own footsteps drive me crazy, so I've been relaxing and taking things easy. Endless worries have been buzzing around my head, and I've been struggling to put them into prospective. You know, making sense out of all the madness? Heh. Sometimes it seems like I'm drowning in a sea of hopelessness, and yet other times I feel like I couldn't be more on top of things. I wish I knew why the latter of the two always seems like a little white lie that I like to get myself carried away on.

At least things have been pretty stable in their own weird way... heh, as if stability is what I need. Tonight was another bottled-poison party, again void of answers. I have to echo the words, "No more excuses," to keep my head from slipping below the water-line. Hopefully all of the people I see during these days are enjoying everything their life brings them. I'll keep it real.

This is one for the good old days...


:. Wednesday, April 05, 2006 at 07:51:37 PM EST

When I need to express and communicate my thoughts and feelings, I pick up a pen and write. To me, writing is the ultimate form of human expression, and so I find myself doing it quite a bit. To share some of my favorite pieces with you loyal readers, I added a writing section to the site. You can find the link to it in the menu on the top right, or by clicking here.

I never write to please and impress anybody else, but it feels really good to know that people can pick up something I've written and simply READ it. Hopefully you like what you find, although I wouldn't necessarily count on it. But who knows -- life is full of possibilities :-)


:. Saturday, April 01, 2006 at 10:20:21 PM EST

Heh, I'm an April fool. What, didn't notice the site all day?


:. Saturday, March 25, 2006 at 01:56:07 AM EST

I swearta god that i dont get druno during sprng break!!1

compensatiooooooooon


:. Saturday, March 18, 2006 at 09:53:30 AM EST

This past week of school has been one of the most stressful I've ever experienced, due largely to the grades that I was trying to raise before the quarter ended Friday. Everything in that area of my life is doing just fine, and hopefully the Spring Break that has finally shown its face and smiled will help fix the rest. As you can see, things are going well so far...



Let's all enjoy ourselves for a week. I bet life can be sane again.


:. Wednesday, March 15, 2006 at 09:59:11 PM EST

Yep, that's the sound I awoke to this past Monday morning. At first, the noise just confused me, but since it was the ungodly hour of 5 AM, the clicks, hums, and blips began to annoy me. I somehow ignored the disturbance for another hour, at which time I was waking up for school. I realized that the noises were coming from my web server, which hosts this website, along with a few others. The sounds were familiar to me -- they were the unpleasant last gasps of air that a hard drive makes just before it dies and goes to computer hardware heaven (the city landfill). I quickly began a backup of all of my important data, but halfway through, the file transfer froze, since I had attempted to copy files from a damaged part of the drive. I didn't have the tme to figure things out at this point, since school was fast approaching, so all day thoughts of losing all of my pictures and files haunted me.

Eventually, I was home again. I booted into several Linux Live CDs, but couldn't get any to mount a BSD partition (ffs). What I finally ended up doing to get the rest of my data off that computer was ridiculous, but it had to be done. I booted up my server using an OpenBSD installation floppy, where I mounted a 256 MB CompactFlash card and manually copied my files over. Keep in mind that the card had limited storage, so I had to copy files over back and forth more times than I wish to recall.

Anyway, the server is FINALLY back up and working properly. I bought a new, 40 GB Seagate hard drive off of Newegg and decided to use Slackware Linux on it this time around instead of OpenBSD. Now I know that OpenBSD is a superior operating system in terms of security, but honestly, I don't keep up with the latest versions of things anymore, simply because its annoying to do so. With Slackware, keeping my system up-to-date with the latest packages is very simple, and as a result, it will leave my server safer.

So, that's what the deal has been with this place this past week. Several people asked me why the site was down, which surprised the shit out of me (in a good way). So to all of you out there who waste your time here, enjoy, for it is back!


:. Sunday, March 05, 2006 at 01:46:13 PM EST

This story is fantasy. These feelings are real.

All too often, we find ourselves living in a state of unpleasant "safety". Under such a condition, it seems that all is well and nothing can be lost. What most fail to see, however, is that consequently, nothing is gained. People and our times with them must be treasured for what they are.

This past summer, I spent a week visiting my friend Mark at Columbia University in New York City. It was tough getting used to sleeping in a sleeping bag in his dorm room and sharing a bathroom with an entire floor of students, but the thrills and laughs that filled every day to the brim kept me smiling. Typical college laziness struck me during my days before the usual college parties consumed my nights. I hardly ever feel complete, and the gap in me that prompted this trip in the first place was just as apparent as ever on the night when I met her. Her name was Adina. While fading out towards the end of the night on the sofa, fate took complete control of both of our lives. Neither of us had the slightest clue that my "Hello" that followed her equally tired collapse just a few feet from me would explode into the wonder that it did. "Oh, hi," she responded. "I'm... dead, what time is it anyway?" I managed to murmur. Adina spoke back, "Just about 3 AM." A series of unintelligible regrets rolled off her tongue as she apologized, "I'm sorry if I seem a bit out of it; It's only because I am, heh." I knew how she felt. In fact, I'm sure everyone in that frat house knew. A minimal, yet drawing, conversation finished up between us as I told her I had to leave with Mark back to the dorms. She said she hoped she'd see me again, which I concurred with. People I've met under circumstances like that are the ones I only see once, except her. She was different. The whole thing was different.

The next morning was surprisingly kind to me, bathing me with the sun's gentle rays that leaked through Mark's half-broken blinds slung over his window. I turned over to see my friend in what seemed like a state of total comatose. "I'll let him sleep," I thought. I took my time waking up, starting with yawning, stretching, and eventually, sitting upright. A quick check of the clock told me that free breakfast was still being served in the cafeteria downstairs. Free breakfast at Columbia University - the idea seemed as if it hatched from a school board meeting where a vocal few felt that students needed to start their days off right. By now I was already in line with the other early-risers, waiting for a bite to eat. I reached for some fluffy pancakes and a nice helping of French toast as I begun to think about how much I truly liked this free breakfast deal, despite my absence of actual university attendance. Finishing putting my plate together, I headed to an empty table and began my much anticipated breakfast. Suddenly, as if she was plucked up and purposely placed directly in front of me, Adina said, "Derek?" I looked up, thinking someone else by my name was likely being called, rather than myself. I was wrong. "Wow, ha, Adina! What's going on?" Normally, I'd hesitate to eat in front of a girl as unfamiliar and breathtakingly beautiful as she was, but like I said, this was different. This whole thing was different.

After I finished up eating, she and I realized that the two of us had nothing planned for the remainder of the day and decided to spend it with each other. She told me that she would show me anything in the city that I wanted to see, since she knew I was from out of town. Site seeing was something I hadn't done there since I was a kid, and it was certainly something Mark wouldn't be up to. I wholeheartedly agreed. Some of the best times I've ever had in the Big Apple came from that day. She was amazing. Her golden hair shone like the sun. I was dazzled by her eyes when she looked at me. Oh, how the green pulled me in. Her smile sent my heart away on a rocket to someplace far off - someplace that I wanted to be. That night ended the same as the the next few would; we hugged, laughed, and agreed that we would see each other again soon.

Mark told me what I was doing was dumb. "You've spent the past three days with her around the city. I'm busy at work during the day anyway, so it works out. If you stopped going with me to our parties I'd have to kill you. And by the way, how much do they beat the hell out of the ones you're used to in high school? Anyway, man, I know you. When you fall for a girl, you really fall for her. I mean, you fall as if the ground you've stood on your whole life was taken from beneath your feet. You get crazy!" he warned me. "I do not get crazy," I defended. "Ha, right. Anyway, just be careful. It's Friday tomorrow, and you're leaving first thing Monday morning, and Saturday and Sunday we have to go to the Island to see Eric. Do the right thing." he added. I understood what he was saying. But I wasn't crazy. I was trying to find what I've been looking for my entire life. I knew it could all be gone soon, in fact, I knew it would all be gone soon. What I was looking for wasn't something to stow away in my pocket.

Friday morning could best be described as a rude awakening. Dreams and visions kept me sleeping in late. Ordinarily, I was awake and out with Adina before Mark's alarm blasted its cruel beeps. I shot out of my uncomfortable arrangement of blankets and sheets that I had been calling my bed to end the noise. I looked over at my cell phone. "1 Missed Call," it read. After waking Mark up for work and getting myself showered and dressed, I gave Adina a call back. That day, we met in Central Park. It was the kind of place that made you forget you were in New York City. She was the kind of girl that made me forget my fear. Every movement, spoken word, glance, and touch, felt right. Over lunch under the shadiest tree we could find, I told her that today would be my last day with her. Hearing myself say those words aloud to her struck me as downright wrong. Why would I ever leave something like this? The truth was that I couldn't leave my family and friends to live on my own in that city. "Then we better make this day the best damn day either one of us has ever seen!" she told me in her usual way. I smiled, and we finished eating. As the day faded into evening, we took turns taking pictures of the sunset and discussing our fantasy plans for the future. It was getting late, so I called Mark and let him know that I wouldn't be joining him at any parties tonight. "Don't get too close, it's going to hurt." is what he left me with. With a look of unsureness, I took on Adina's face. She grabbed my hand and rushed me through the mad crowds. "Come on!" she yelled. People zoomed past me in blurs. After a while, my confusion was fed with her saying, "This is where I live." I looked up at a grid of apartments. We headed for the building's double doors and hopped on the elevator. "I go to LaGuardia, just a few blocks from here." she told me. "How do you like it there?" I asked. The elevator took us closer to her floor. The bell rang and the doors opened. We stepped out. She answered, "Well, school is school, what can I say?" I knew what she meant, of course.

Finally, she opened the door to her apartment. I looked around and noticed something peculiar about the place. "I live alone, that's why everything is a mess, sorry" she explained, reading the confusion off of my obvious face. "My parents live upstate, but they want me to go to LaGuardia and all, so they pay for all of this. Nuts if you ask me." she further informed me. What had I gotten myself into? I was so into this girl. Adina was everything. The ticking clocks sounded in my head, counting down the time. We stood for a moment, and then I held her closer than anyone could ever guess. Her lips were gentle against mine. The details that followed are hazy, but we awoke hours later, almost in unison, to let our eyes capture the twilight of the city's midnight skyline. Everything was perfect. It was nirvana.

The night eventually ended. I told her my final goodbyes at the doorstep of her building. I wrapped my arms around her and ran my fingers through her angelic hair one last time as I whispered into her ear, "Love isn't had, it's achieved. I will never forget you, Adina." After a long set of tears, we finally let go. I started my walk back to the train, turning around every few moments to see her face in the way that I knew I'd never see it again. Another visit wouldn't be the same. Out of the streams running down my cheeks came a smile. She smiled back at me. I knew what she meant.


:. Thursday, February 23, 2006 at 03:25:00 PM EST

I don't believe in anyone. I just believe in me.

Regards,
Basium Solitarius


:. Friday, February 03, 2006 at 08:00:35 PM EST

I'm here in Jupiter visiting my Mom like I do from time to time. Upon cleaning up some code for this site's backend, I realized that it's been quite a while since I last posted...

I typically don't like making periodic entries on here just to reassure the few readers this site still attracts that I'm alive. Things of significance, like the concert I wrote about in my last post, are the of sort that I feel is worthy. Those things aside, I decided it was time for an update just for the hell of it!

Lately I've been getting back into playing video games like I used to. The Nintendo DS I got for Christmas has been the source of much entertainment since late December, especially since I got a SuperCard and hacked my DS' firmware. I can now take the DS and GBA roms that can be downloaded on the net and play them on my Nintendo. In addition, I can play MP3s and videos on my DS, thanks to homebrew applications like Moonshell. If you've been thinking of getting a DS, I definitely suggest you go ahead and do it. Not only does Nintendo pump out the coolest games, but a hacked DS opens up a whole new world of portable entertainment!

Unlike the DS, the other video game system that I've been toying around with recently is considered a classic; The Sega Saturn is easily one of my favorite consoles of all time. Sega's 32-bit wonder is the home to some of the greatest games to date, including Panzer Dragoon, Nights Into Dreams, Virtua Fighter, and Radiant Silvergun. I've recently figured out how to perform what is known as the "swap trick" with my Saturn, which allows me to play burned games that I either copy from the originals or download off the net. Just like with my DS, I'm now addicted to playing games on this thing, too.

Now you all have an idea of the sort of geeky things I do when I'm not with friends, or throwing house parties. At the very least, I keep myself busy. Plus, games are fun, you can't deny it!


:. Sunday, January 08, 2006 at 03:39:52 PM EST

Last night, my dad took me and Dana with him and his girlfriend to see Billy Joel in concert at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise. When news of this show first surfaced, I became extremely excited knowing that as soon as tickets went on sale I'd be in posession of something granting me access to the venue of a lifetime. Billy Joel has been one of my favorite singers, songwriters, or whatever other name you could pin on him, for about six or more years, so seeing him was nothing short of heavenly.

The concert started at 8:20 PM or so and lasted a little over two hours, including the two encores he did, which included about four songs. I wasn't familiar with a few songs played that night, however, I enjoyed them nonetheless. The majority of the music I knew, and I found myself singing along at the top of my lungs as if I were on stage with Billy as his fingers worked their sweet magic on the piano. Throughout the whole show, Dana was using my camera to take tons of pictures, which are now online here! Two videos are amongst that collection, too, including one of the indescribably magnificent display of cellphones just before the encore and a small part of Piano Man. I have a few other videos of whole songs, however, they're far too big to allow all of you to download off of me. If you're a fan out there and really want to see them, drop me an email, and I'll hook you up :-)

So, all in all, seeing the man that I consider the master of the ivory keys play was the perfect ending to the already awesome winter break that I've been enjoying. Today is the last day before dreaded school starts up again, so I feel I should be leaving you now and getting some fun in before it's too late.


:. Thursday, January 05, 2006 at 09:26:59 PM EST

I returned the digital camera that my dad got me for Christmas as a result of some of its shortcomings and lack of advertized features, leaving me with $520 to spend. Now, I'm not going to blow it ALL, but I did buy a new Casio EX-Z57 from Dell's online store. I ordered it this past Tuesday afternoon at 3 PM and recieved it the very next day at 11 AM, all for only $286! Nuts, hm? More important than how quickly it shipped is the cameras quality, which is superb. I owe Dana a great deal of thanks for suggesting this camera to me. After having it only three days, I made three new picture albums (Sushi, Hookah, The Mall). I'm going to keep adding pictures of sushi eat-outs and mall visits to their corresponding albums as time goes on. All of this camera-talk leads me to the second part of my post...

I've added a "Newest photo album" element to my RSS feed. Currently, it reads "Sushi". On top of that, the Pictures section now has its very own comment system! You can leave comments on individual pictures just like you can on posts like this. Here's one that I made a test comment on to show you what I'm talking about. All you have to do is click the "comment" link and you're set. I've been wanting to implement this for quite some time now, so I'm glad that I've finally got it done! I hope you all make good use out of it ;-)


:. Sunday, January 01, 2006 at 01:57:56 PM EST

So its 2006 now... cool! This past year was pretty damn alright, to sum it up. I could go into detail and do some sort of "year-in-review" thing, but would any of you even bother reading that? Exactly...

Anyway, let me get started in describing last night; Dana and I started out not really knowing where we'd end up. We first headed to our friend Spencer's house, where we and everyone else there all migrated to a party being held by some girl named Chelsea. This girl's mom had a drink in her hand all night, and even made us all little pastry things towards the end of the night, probably because she realized half of the people there were high. More importantly than food and an altered state of mind was the fun we all had there. There were drinks all around, and if I recall correctly, a nice game of pong somewhere during the evening. I didn't bring a camera out with me last night, so I won't have any sort of photo album online until all of YOU contribute your pictures! If you have any pictures at all from the night, email them to me at derek@backdrifts.net.

Aside from the new year, about seven or so days ago, we were all celebrating a different holiday -- Christmas! I got tons of awesome stuff this year, like a Nintendo DS, a digital camera, and every released season of Seinfeld on DVD, to name a few. I always get so much on Christmas, making me feel a little bad. It's really difficult to feel anything but joy when you get all of those presents, though, so I take it back -- I'm happy. Pictures of the day are online here.

I hope you all had a great New Years and will make the best of 2006.


:. Saturday, December 24, 2005 at 09:26:01 PM EST

For those of you who aren't familiar with digg, let me shed some light on this fabulous site.

Digg consists of a community of users who are constantly submitting technology-related news stories from around the net. Digg, unlike Slashdot, empowers its members by allowing them to "digg" articles. Articles that are really cool or informative often receive 200, 500, or even a 1000 "diggs"! Submissions that are deemed good enough by the community eventually make their way to the front page, where even more users will see them. Because not everything submitted to digg is even half-decent, the community also has the option to mark articles as unfitting for the site. Through this roller coaster of opinions expressed out loud, digg manages to remain both fair and cool. Like anything else, abuse occurs, which hast he potential to result in articles and stories ending up on the front page dishonestly. This is, however, the essence of a community. At digg, instances like that are handled swiftly and accordingly. If I left anything out, here's the official digg faq.

Now for the reason I'm making this post in the first place -- a story I submitted to digg actually made it to the front page! While it lasts, check it out for yourself, just search for the submission by ateam! Now, taking digg's extremely dynamic front page into account, I realize that my story won't be up for very long. So, in order to preserve my fleeting glory, here's a permanent link. For those of you too lazy to see this for yourself, then I'll just let you know right here that what I submitted to digg was a post on the Gaim website that was in response to the complaints and suggestions for improvement for the 2.0-beta release of their messaging client. I know, the non-geeks reading this right now are just dying with interest.

Anyway, I was pretty excited to see this happen, as this Gaim story is only the second submission I've made to digg. If the article gets 1000 diggs, it will be mentioned in diggnation, the podcast and Internet "tv show" hosted by the creators of digg. Me? Famous? Oh... haha, I've been waiting to be discovered for years... Okay, okay, back to Earth...

Bye everyone, and enjoy your holiday!


:. Friday, December 23, 2005 at 06:29:10 PM EST

Last weekend, Dana came up to my mom's in Jupiter. We had a blast eating my mom's awesome Christmas cookies, sitting around watching some crazy law show, and most of all, riding around on the ATVs up there. The first few times one drives a four-wheeler by themself, problems arise with steering and with giving the vehicle too much or too little gas. This is evident by watching Dana on one of her first few go-arounds, which you can do by checking out this video (DiVX / QuickTime).

The voice behind the camera there is my mother's, and the two figures you see holding on to their dear lives on the seat of that green ATV are Dana and me. The dialogue in the video, in case you can't make it out yourself, is as follows:

Mom: Come on, I'm shootin' a video!
Dana: *gasp/laugh*
Derek: She can't drive!
Mom: I'm shootin' a video, go!
Derek: Go!
Dana: *gasp/laugh*
Derek: Go!
Dana: I can't turn it!
Mom: Hahaha... haha...

I recall thinking I was good enough to ride on a beginner track the first few times I drove our four-wheeler; I nearly died, so relatively speaking, Dana did quite well. Most importantly, we had a great time.

Sorry that post was a bit late, but this past week was host to our midterms, which for us Seniors were actually our last high school exams... ever! I smile now, but I'm sure college exams are going to kick my ass.

All of that being said, it's time for all of us still slaves to the public school system to rejoice, for Winter Break is here! Christmas is just two days away, so I'm really excited. I'll be sure to post pictures of what was waiting for me under the tree. Until then, enjoy the season, everyone!


:. Thursday, December 15, 2005 at 11:28:51 PM EST

Christmas is just ten days away, so I'm into the spirit of the holiday! This is the first Christmas in ages that I've actually been sincerely excited and happy about. My dad and I spent all of this evening up until just now setting up our tree.

Because I love all of you so much (pshyea right), I've decided to share the beauty of my pine with you...



This picture in NO WAY does my Christmas tree justice -- but since most of you won't make it into my living room before mid-January, this is the best I can do.

Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, and a happy New Year everyone!


:. Thursday, December 08, 2005 at 09:17:46 PM EST

Well, maybe not brilliance, but something similar.

Because of the lack of fun things I've programmed lately, coupled with the sheer boredom I was faced with earlier, I started writing what I hope will soon become a complex and very informative MP3 listening statistics page. Currently, my script hasn't had the chance to record much, so my favorite songs won't be horribly apparent for a bit.

Right now only the number of times a given song has been played is displayed. Things I want to add, however, are the times at which I most frequently play that song, how many minutes, hours, or days have past since I've last listened to it, and other neat pieces of information that I've yet to come up with. I realize that it seems like I'm doing market research on myself, but mind you, this isn't the case. I just wanted to code -- plain and simple.

Anyway, if you've got any suggestions for my stats, leave a comment!


:. Monday, December 05, 2005 at 12:37:42 AM EST

Those of you who don't spend your nights fiddling away on your keyboards while glaring at the warm glow emitted from your monitors may not be familiar with the recent actions of our once-friendly Japanese electronics developer and manufacturer, Sony. The new line of disturbingly intrusive copy-protected discs that has rolled off of the assembly line include albums not worth the CDs they're pressed on, such as "On Ne Change Pas" by Celine Dion. A complete list of the infected albums is available here.

So just what is this copy-protection that has me and the rest of the privacy-loving world in fury? Boy am I glad you asked! The corporate geniuses over at Sony thought it would be a good idea to secretly deploy a new protection scheme on some of their new albums. The scheme I'm referring to is a piece of software that claims to have been developed by a company called "First 4 Internet" that installs and hides itself on any computer running Windows that comes in contact with one of the infected discs. This clandestine and meddlesome approach to stopping its customers from copying their Sony-published audio CDs has left the company with lawsuits, disgruntled music listeners, and a world of troubles to deal with as far as the code they stole from an open-source audio project called LAME while putting together their little devil-of-a-binary that has now made headlines everywhere. LAME is under the GPL, which prohibits the use of its code from being used in other software projects without giving it the proper credit and citation, making what Sony did quite illegal.

As if Sony's application that runs the risk of opening users up to malicious Internet prowlers while attempting to keep users from copying the music they legally bought wasn't enough, the megacorp that everyone now loves to hate has gone and made it worse for themselves.

In mid-November, graffiti artists tagged up various cities with images promoting Sony's relatively new PSP handheld console. These taggers haven't been directly linked to the company yet, however, mostly everyone agrees that it's likely they were hired by Sony in order to push sales for the fastly-approaching holiday season. Once people in the neighborhoods where the art appeared became wise to the whole situation, they struck back with valiant force, modifying the original graffiti to really show Sony where we as consumers stand. At least the locals didn't get caught, unlike these Einsteins, whom most still believe were paid by the company.

All things considered here, Sony is really getting out of hand. Do all yourselves a favor this Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanza... stay away from that company! If you already made the mistake of purchasing and then using your computer to play one of the previously mentioned infected albums, perhaps this removal tutorial will be of some use to you. For the rest of us -- let's just pray they don't start installing secret software in our brains while we're asleep, or something. Hey, it could happen! With Sony, one never really knows these days.


:. Thursday, November 24, 2005 at 09:34:21 PM EST

So, today was Thanksgiving and my sister Kylee's 16th birthday. We had TONS of great food. I mean, every year we have good food, but this year's was the absolute best yet.

Anyway, this post has got to be brief, since we're pretty busy here. Two pictures from my sister's birthday-cake-singing thing are up here.

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday! I'm up here at my mom's in Jupiter, but will be back tomorrow early afternoon.


:. Tuesday, November 22, 2005 at 02:05:58 PM EST

I'm back from my four day trip to Orlando. I'm really only making this post to say that, and to tell you all that my pictures are now online.

Enjoy!


:. Sunday, November 20, 2005 at 12:07:11 PM EST

I'm making this post from the Innovations Center at Disney's Epcot park. I guess the security on these public ThinkPlace terminals isn't quite what it should be. From here, I can literally access any part of the Internet from their net connection. Oh well...

Anyway, all is well here. I'm having a good time with my family, though I wish I could be hanging out with you all, heh. I haven't started my research paper yet. It's due tomorrow, but luckily I won't be in school again until Wednesday. I guess I'll just stay at the hotel tomorrorw and work instead of going to the parks. I hate school...

Also, I've been taking pictures, so when I get back, I'll post them on here. Until then, this is Derek signing off. Peace out playas'


:. Friday, November 18, 2005 at 05:10:28 PM EST

So my sister Kylee is turning 16 this coming Thursday and has decided that, as her present, she wants to go to all of the Disney World parks this weekend, including Monday and Tuesday. Most of the fun I have at these parks is due to memories and time spent with my family. If I had to pick a favorite, Epcot would be it, since it has a cool Japan section and a bunch of other neat things.

That aside, Disney World, along with the entire corporation of Disney, has grown increasingly scary with time. From joining the group of film studios who sued my friends at 2600 some years ago, to all of those strange fidings that have been made regarding "hidden" messages and images in their films -- that Mickey Mouse just freaks me out.

Well, I guess that's it. I'll be back Tuesday!


:. Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 01:48:01 AM EST

It was my youngest sister Jevin's 7th birthday on the 10th. Pictures were taken at the party we had for her a few days ago and are online here.

Of all of the photos, this is truly the grandest:



This is how two real G-Freshes do it. Teh Awesome...


:. Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 01:55:46 PM EST

It's been a bit over three weeks since my last post on here, so where do I begin...

As predicted by my last post, Hurricane Wilma really did do some damage to the area. We were out of school for two weeks, power lines and street lights were destroyed, we were without electricity for a week, and my DSL was just restored two nights ago. While this site was down, I used my free shell account to host a little message about the storm and my condition.

I'm not going to use this post to talk about all of the particularls of the hurricane and all of the interesting things I experienced. If you want to read about it in the little journal I started after we lost power, which is available here. My friend Emmanuel from 2600 even had me on one of his radio shows, Off The Wall, basically expanding on that journal. If you'd like to listen it, just follow this link. I come in about 15 minutes or so into the show. In addition to all of that, I just put up all of the pictures me and my sister took both during and after the hurricane, so check them out.

Anyway, everything has returned to normalcy as far as my computers and this website go. Things have been going really well, and last night was my friend Adam's 18th birthday. Of course we had a great party, and of course I'm having some difficulty remembering certain details, but hey -- that's how you know it was badass! Pictures from the evening will be online soon, so pay attention for when I post them.

Update: Pictures from Adam's party are online here.


:. Friday, October 21, 2005 at 01:46:03 AM EST

And no, I'm not Fred Flintstone yelling at my wife like I usually do. Hurricane Wilma, in all of its grandure, is headed straight for my area. Currently, the bastard is about 600 miles or so off the coast, and is expected to make landfall in the States sometime Monday afternoon or night. Obviously we won't have school as a result, which is always awesome, but this storm is actually starting to scare me a bit. As you can see below, my situation is rather... shitty...


I'll have to put up shutters whatnot sometime this weekend to ensure a tree doesn't fly through my window and do something horrible like kill me or someone in my family... even worse, it could destroy one of my computers. The mere thought of a life without my silicon beauty is getting me misty already...

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the weekend and have fun. Maybe the state of Florida has seen its final days, and you'll all end up seeing me on my roof on T.V. in a few days like those poor souls in the gulf states. Then again, my Marine Science teacher says the high pressure system above us is going to completely divert the hurricane away. He was right about the last two storms, so there's hope.

Update: No school Monday. We're still all going to die...

Another Update: No school Tuesday, either!


:. Sunday, October 16, 2005 at 11:15:09 PM EST

Home again... what a great trip. Spending time with one of the greatest people I've ever met, my friend Eric, really did me an amount of good this weekend. He lives in Long Island, so I got to take in the beautiful scenery and weather. Here in Florida, it's summer all year long -- I mean it, too. Right now its 80°, whereas it would be somewhere in the 50's. I really believe that we as humans need a change of season. It reminds us that nature is ultimately in control, which keeps us humble.

During the break I watched tons of funny shows, drank some fine Corona, had a blast getting glanced and gawked at by everyone on the streets as we cruised around in the Smart Car, ate at some great restaurants, and was able to free my head of cares and worries, enjyoing the moment. I really hope all of you spent your time away from school these past four days doing what you love.

I feel as good to be back as it did to leave in the first place. A warm greeting from my best friends really reminded me that things are okay, and in fact, things are pretty damn good. They rock...


:. Thursday, October 13, 2005 at 11:01:11 AM EST

The city that never sleeps is in anxious preparation for my arrival. I'm on the free WiFi at Palm Beach International Airport right now, which is great. I always prefer flying out of this airport as opposed to Ft. Lauderdale because of the WiFi.

This is my first experience flying completely on my own, and its pretty neat so far. My dad had to let me go at the security checkpoint because I'm over 18 now and, of course, have no need for a parental guardian of any kind... except to drive me here, and pay for my trip, and stuff.

Anyway, I'll update when I land and get to my friend's place. Until then, shine on you crazy diamonds.


:. Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 08:09:34 PM EST

So we had a kegger the night of Homecoming... and what did we decide to do with the left-overs? Bathtub, tupperware, beer party! So right now its Alex, Adam, Danny and Me enjoying the wonderful brew, and boy is it wonderful.





I'm on like, glass 10000, so excuse this shitty post. Enjoy the photos, though. That bin WAS full, and that's my hand in there refilling. I'll see you all Sunday night when I get back from my mini-vacation to New York.

Update: Due to circumstances beyond the real of human control, I'll be staying home this weekend. Another time...

Another Update: The impossible has been done; I've booked another flight, and I'm leaving for New York tomorrow morning :-) !


:. Sunday, October 09, 2005 at 03:29:38 AM EST

Its almost 3:30 AM now, and the Homecoming Dance wasn't too bad. I had my friends with me and all was well. I also saw a lot of people that always bring a smile to my face. Things that have been smothering my every thought seem to have finally been put to rest, too. Reasons why that was able to happen in the first place are still, at this point, uncertain. I'm sure that answers will come in time, though.

Watching my life change before my very eyes is staggering, and heinseight always seems to be 20/20. Then again, looking back, I wouldn't trade a thing.

At the very least, I have this neat ticket to remind me of how wonderful and not full of shit high school is. Haha -- yeah right. I really should have made a fake ticket to get my friend Danny in after all, since they didn't even check ticket numbers, meaning everyone who showed up to the dance could have had the number "0001" printed on their ticket and still got in just fine. Maybe the administration was hoping that the metal detectors and mandatory photo IDs would save us from potential doom such as that. Another typical illusion of security.


:. Friday, October 07, 2005 at 11:38:50 PM EST

To try to get out of my recent slum, I've decided to go to the homecoming dance Saturday night. During miserable times where nothing seems to matter, my best friends are always there for me. Whether they're steering me straight, or helping me forget things altogether, I know I can lean on them. People like that seem to be becoming increasingly fewer and farer between.

As I've never been a man of dress, my friend Danny has supplied me with a badass maroon striped collared shirt that I'll be wearing some black dress pants. Hopefully I'll look alright. More importantly, I hope I have fun with my friends and the cool people around me.

Anyway, things are looking up. Maybe I just lost it for a while...


:. Sunday, October 02, 2005 at 02:16:48 PM EST

Alright, so its not that big, but at least I got this neat, personalized birthday card from Radiohead's Thom Yorke...



I've been telling you all for years now that Thom and I go way back, yet no one ever believes me. Is this proof enough? I mean, he's even wearing one of my fanclub t-shirts.

Thanks, friends :-)


:. Sunday, September 25, 2005 at 11:11:11 PM EST

And so ends another weekend at my mother's house in Jupiter.

I relaxed, I wondered, I dreamed, I worried, I smiled, I cried, and upon reflection, realized its almost entirely out of my realm of control. Or is it? Do I spend each day in places I'd rather not be with people I'd rather not be with for some particular reason that I'm not yet aware of? Is is set in stone that I've got to be reticent to the point where I'm living in my dreams and sleeping through my life? Is it like some say; is happiness evanescent and meant to be treasured? I better save my life, because I've only got one.


:. Monday, September 19, 2005 at 11:40:52 PM EST

As if Katrina wasn't bad enough, the Gulf states will be suffering yet another storm as it makes its way past our own Florida Keys tomorrow evening. After about Wednesday or so, we'll know if Tropical Storm Rita has sped up and turned into a hurricane, officially making this the unluckiest year for anyone living on the southern coast of the U.S. I mean, haven't these people endured enough? As you can see...



...the storm is missing me completely, but we still may get a day off from school either tomorrow or Wednesday. Come on everyone, keep your fingers crossed ;-) And also, let's hope that everyone in the Gulf area is safe, too. Those people have gone through enough strife to last them the rest of their lives.

Update: So we DIDN'T get the day off from school. Oh well...


:. Wednesday, September 14, 2005 at 08:38:32 PM EST

So Pat released Slackware Linux 10.2 just a few minutes ago. Hooray! From the changelog...

"Announcing Slackware Linux 10.2! The second Slackware release of 2005, Slackware Linux 10.2 continues the long Slackware tradition of simplicity, stability, and security. Among the many program updates and distribution enhancements, you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: XFce 4.2.2, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 3.4.2, the latest version of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Slackware uses the 2.4.31 kernel bringing you advanced performance features such as the ReiserFS journaling filesystem...."

If your heart so desires, you can read the rest here. You know, its great; after all these years, Slackware still remains my favorite distribution. Its simple, easily configurable, and logical. The package manager is easy to understand and work with. Everything about it is awesome. If it falls short anyway, its a lack of optional packages available to users, but I typically create my own anyway, so I'm not too bothered.

Anyway, as I've said in the past, "Long Live Slack!" (sorry Debian)


:. Monday, September 12, 2005 at 02:23:11 PM EST

I've had a real dilema lately in getting some sort of exercise in each day -- until now. Thanks to the physically demanding wonders of Dance Dance Revolution, I can get a decent workout by staying at home and playing video games! Staying home and playing video games is one of my favorite past-times, or at least it used to be. I typically don't have the time or will to play games like I used to, but now that I've finally given the DDR mat that I bought over two years ago a try, I forsee myself playing Dance Dance Revolution a whole lot.

So, next time my parents tell me that I don't get enough physical activity, I can slap them both in the face with my fast-paced, rhythmic dancing skills.

Dance on...


:. Tuesday, September 06, 2005 at 11:02:54 PM EST

So I've finally given Debian a fair try by installing it on my laptop. After a few days with my new system, I've come to love and despise several aspects of the way Debian works. Allow me to elaborate...

• Packages
  The apt system that Debian has become famous for is great in that after specifying a mirror, a user can download and install nearly every Linux application, tool, and library known to man by simply issuing a command or two. Unfortunately, apt isn't perfect, and sometimes there are conflicts and uncertainties that are presented to the user. This typically tends to not be too big a deal, as solutions and explanations can be found all over the Internet. Also, Debian packages aren't quite as simple as the Slackware packages I've grown to love over the years. Making and understanding them will come in time, though.


• Init Scripts
  Slackware uses BSD style init scripts, whereas Debian uses the standard System V scripts, which I'm not quite as used to. I like how with the standard init style, you simply make a symbolic link to /etc/rcX.d/ from the various scripts found in /etc/init.d/ to change or add to how your system boots (where X is the runlevel). With Slackware, everything is found in /etc/rc.d/, and runlevel-specific scripts are separated from the others in that directory. Modifying these is pretty simple and self-explanatory after looking through them a bit. Ultimately, both styles are effective and logical. The standard Linux init style does beat the BSD style in the sense that it is standard. I recall having to create a fake bunch of standard init directories on Slackware in order to trick the VMware installer into writing its startup scripts.


• Kernel
  For whatever reason, every Debian user I've talked to, and every Debian kernel compilation HOWTO I've found, all say the same thing: Use mk-kpgk to install your own custom kernel! Using the mk-kpkg method isn't too much of a hastle, and it does give users the ability to create kernel-image packages easily. I prefer the old make clean, etc., etc., make install method, though. Either way, you get your own kernel in the end.

Okay, so I don't despise Debian, but as you can see, I'm pretty split as far as it and Slackware go. I forsee myself keeping Slackware on my desktop machine for the rest of my life, and using Debian on experimental or non-primary machines.


:. Friday, September 02, 2005 at 07:13:27 PM EST

Surprisingly, life is going pretty damn well these days. Every morning I wake up and ride with two of my best friends to school, where I hang out all day and have fun. How is it that every other year of high school was miserable, but my senior year is so cool? I don't come across one class all day that gives me trouble, and I have people to talk to in each. Its about time...

Anyway, I've got a three day weekend ahead of me, so I'm just going to take it easy, relax, and think about things. I'm in Jupiter at my mom's house with just my family this time, so I won't have the usual friends to hang out with. No worries, I just got back from the video store where I got four movies.

Until next time -- farewell :)


:. Friday, August 26, 2005 at 11:52:35 AM EST

So, last night, Katrina DIDN'T fuck me... sigh. Haha, I was talking about Hurricane Katrina. It hit just as quickly as it left and provided us all with some pretty cool storm sounds, whcih I awlays love. Also, the hurricane gave us a half day yesterday (Thursday) and school off today (Friday). After the half day, Alex and I hung out with some cool people and had a little "hurricane party". But don't worry -- we were careful and nobody died.

Anyway, I guess its time for me to enjoy this wonderful Friday off. Oh, and the power went out for a bit longer than my battery backup could handle, so my server's uptime was reset. Its nothing that won't time won't fix :-)


:. Friday, August 19, 2005 at 11:39:17 PM EST

A lot has been going on lately. The club I wanted to start at school was finally approved, and tonight I went to the local BinRev meeting at the Town Center Mall. I had a blast, and I plan on coming back for each meeting. I also hope to contribute a good deal to the whole group, as I really love technology and am in real need of experimenting and learning about it these days.

Aside from the meet, tonight was my friend's Justin's going-away party. He's leaving for college in a few days, so we all had to have one last bash to say goodbye. I'm sure I'll be seeing him though, since he'll still be in-state.

All in all, things are going well.

Oh, and the new club at school that my friend Adam and I have started will be known as "Tech Club", as the name "Computer Club" is already taken. Our club will bitch their club, since we're actually going to be working with computers and not just sitting around playing LAN games (which are still cool).

Avior!


:. Saturday, August 12, 2005 at 02:59:56 PM EST

Thanks to the magic of my battery backup, my webserver here at backdrifts.net has been online for 151 days! Yep... that's a long time for all of you out there who don't know about the bragging rights that comes with an uptime like that.

In celebration of my server's uptime, I have prepared that there lovely BACKDRIFTS 151 graphic. Its just a clever modification of everybody's favorite alcoholic beverage... you know, the one that makes even the toughest drinkers puke? I'm thinking of starting my own line of BACKDRIFTS alcohol. Consider this a prototype, I guess.

In other news, the first week of the new school year is over. Being a senior really is badass, espcially with Senior Privilege, where I get to leave campus an hour early. I hope to do really well this year so I can be sure of getting into a good university later, so I've got to stay on track. As far as my school being stupid, this year is so exception. Now there is a color-coded threat table in every classroom. I guess that's how you treat kids that you want to grow up to be intelligent people, with color associations... sigh. I'll have a picture of the table on here next week, I just have to remember to take a camera to school.

Anyway, its the first weekend of my senior year, so its time to go have some fun :-) Man was the summer too short. Just as I got back from my trip, it was back to the gear grind of school. Oh well. Bye now.


:. Tuesday, August 02, 2005 at 08:10:14 PM EST

Yep, that's right! I just got in not more than ten minutes ago.

Well, lets see. Thanks to this website, you all already know what I've been up to. So all that's left to say is:

I have to unpack.
I have to do laundry.
I have to fix my schedule before school in two days.
I have to have some fun.

Live these last days of summer to the fullest, boys.


:. Friday, July 29, 2005 at 05:26:15 PM EST

After years of growing my hair out, I finally got my cousin to cut it today -- something I've put off for too long.

So, without further ado, I present to you my new "look"



I, for one, really like it, though I was in a bit of a shock for the first few minutes. I know my mother and father are going to love it, seeing as how they've been discretely begging me to chop of all my hair for the longest time now.

Anyway, that's that.

In other news, because of a few problems with laundry and transportation, I wasn't able to make it to yesterday's Off The Hook, which is upsetting. I'm always up here in New York, so its nothing to fret over.

That aside, I've got four more days left here before I hop on a plane back home to Florida. Saturday is my cousin Stacy's wedding, and then Sunday I leave.

Summer has been well, but its time to get home.


:. Monday, July 25, 2005 at 08:39:13 PM EST

Just so everyone knows, things are going well here in New York. I've been having fun with my cousins and the rest of my extended family.

Today was no exception; I had a great time at the Yankee V.S. Angles game. The Yankees beat the Angels 8 to 7 in a really close game that went all the way into the 11th inning. Now, I'm certainly no Yankee fan, in fact, I'm a Mets fan if anything. However, above all of that, I am a fan of baseball, and have been since I was a little kid. I don't often pay attention to what's going on season to season, let alone care who wins between the Yankees and the Angels. What I wanted to see today was a good baseball game, and that's what I got.

Here's a picture of Derek Jeter I took at the game earlier today using my dad's crappy cameraphone:



I don't care for this guy too much, but as you can see, we had great seats and I felt I just had to get a picture, albeit fuzzy, of him.

To finish up here, I should be heading back to the city sometime next week, as that's when everyone gets back from What The Hack?. Plus, I left my ID at Columbia University on accident. I can already tell that I'm not made out for Ivy League, heh :-)


:. Sunday, July 24, 2005 at 11:31:26 PM EST

Today, RedHackt left for the What The Hack? conference, and I took the ferry back to Staten Island to hang out with my cousins. Everyone gets back from the conferece August 2nd I think, so I should be heading back into the city around then for at least a couple of days.

So far not much has been going on here, but I'm having fun. My cousins and his friends are cool guys.

Until next time, enjoy your summers everyone.


:. Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 01:39:33 AM EST

So day one here in Manhattan, where I'm spending the rest of the weekend, has come to a close. After a great afternoon of beer and burgers, RedHackt and I went back to his place to play some DDR, mess around on the computers, and grab more to eat. I'd imagine living around here would be pretty cool. They've got a kichen, decent sized dorms, a trainstation, and tons of shops nearby.

I'm borrowing my sister's camera while I stay here in the city at Columbia University in my friend's dorm, but it ran out of batteries. As a result, I won't have any photos from up here online for a bit longer. Oh well, all is well because I'm having a blast!


:. Thursday, July 21, 2005 at 06:33:27 PM EST

I don't have long to write on here because my grandmother's neighbor's wireless is being unreliable. So, I'll just make this quick:

My dad, sister and I drove from Pennsylvania to my grandmother's house here in Staten Island, New York today. Tomorrow, I'm meeting up with RedHackt in the city and staying at his place for a couple of days. It should be a blast.

Also, my pictures from Pennsylvania are up, check them out.

I hope everyone is enjoy their summer! Bye...


:. Tuesday, July 19, 2005 at 01:45:53 PM EST



"Hmph... I sure do wish I was home being a party animal."


:. Monday, July 18, 2005 at 05:46:56 PM EST

But seriously... I couldn't even get a ping response from this domain from up here in Pennsylvania because of over 10 different IP addresses bombarding the MP3 directory on my workstation with tons of requests. I had to call my dad at home and get him to turn off Apache just to SSH in and pssword protect the MP3s.

Christ...


:. Saturday, July 16, 2005 at 08:57:20 AM EST

So I'm here at the Palm Beach International Airport where my flight was delayed two hours. I'm actually pretty glad it was, since now I can toy around on the computer here with their free WiFi, not to mention my layover in Atlanta to Pennsylvania has been eliminated for the most part because of it.

And as for yesterday, my last day in town and my last day of summer with my friends, it was awesome. I don't feel too well today as a result of the festivities, but I'm happy nonetheless.

Well, that's about it. I'm going to sit here in the Delta Crown Room on my laptop and attempt to recover from my horribly upset stomach while the rest of you sleep at this unreasonable hour of 10 AM.


:. Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at 11:02:19 PM EST

Because I'm leaving for good. Just kidding...

I'll be heading out to New York and Pennsylvania for three weeks this Saturday. I'm really not in the mood to pick up and leave. I'm having more fun this summer with everyone than I have ever before. Its weird how that works. Missing everybody is going to suck, especially since the few friends that I'm going to get a chance to see while I'm up there will be leaving for What The Hack? in Amsterdam. God, I wish I was going. Hopefully my friend Adam down here will be able to meet up with me when he's in Manhattan with his family, too. If not, then at least I'll get to do the Off The Hook radio show every Wednesday.

Anyway, I'll have internet access up there, so I'll post now and then on what's up. Oh, and since I'll have my sister's camera, I'll even be able to post up some pictures of things I deem worthy of your attention and time.

Thanks everyone, it means the world to me, you have no idea. Keep it real.

Yours,
Derek


:. Thursday, July 07, 2005 at 03:25:08 AM EST

Or at least for me.

I found a torrent on digg for a great DiVX rip of a DVD entitled The Best Of The Screen Savers, which apparently came with Leo Laporte's 2004 Technology Alamanc and is considered pretty rare. Either way, watching it is really making me happy.

You have to understand that there hasn't been any good technology television since the old days of The Screen Savers, which only exists today in the all-too faint memories of the once loyal viewers of now gone ZDTV.


:. Saturday, July 02, 2005 at 07:54:46 PM EST

Maybe you've noticed a few changes around here, and maybe you haven't. In either case, I'll let you all know that I changed the formatting of backdrifts.net a bit in order to improve the general look and to help visitors distinguish among certain things easier.

For one, all links found in either posts or in projects are italicized and become lighter in color when you hover your mouse over them, including the link to the MP3 that I'm currently listening to in the upper right of the page. Some people were unable to find certain links because they didn't stick out enough, apparently. Links to comments, different sections of the site, and all naviagtional links remain plain, though.

Also, the bold titles of posts are now "invisible links" that can be clicked on to view that post alone, making it possible to send links pointing to individual posts to others via instant message or email. In addition, one could even bookmark an individual post to visit at a later date, etc.

I'm not done yet... I added something sort of useless, since individual posts can already be visited using the method described above. Despite all that, its now possible to have your browser scroll to an individual post using the all posts link found at the post browser at the bottom of the page and adding #postnumber to the end of the url. For example, to scroll directly to fifth post made on the site (post number 5), one could simply visit http://backdrifts.net/index.pl?section=home&view=all#5. Nifty? Well, not really.

Lastly, I made some backend changes in regards to how information is stored in the database. Now THAT interests nobody at all.

This is the one and only ateam signing off! Oh, and if you're looking for the blue X that used to close the picture search and comment popup boxes, I got rid of it. Just use the X that's builtin to your browser, which can usually be found on the top of a window in its far right.


:. Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 03:03:03 PM EST

I just got home from my short but sweet three day visit to New York.

Sunday night was my cousin Lisa's ridiculously huge sweet 16 party, where I accidently drank nearly all of the glasses of champagne at my table, not knowing they were meant for a toast and wouldn't be refilled. Oh well, I can't say I felt bad afterwards, heh ;-)

Sunday night was awesome, since I got to go to the city and meet up with my friend Emmanuel from 2600 and ride around in his badass Smart Car, getting smiles and weird glances from everybody. We walked around Central Park and even ate lunch at the famous Carnegie Deli, where I got my first-ever bowl of matzah ball soup, and likely my second or third potato knish. Both were good, of course.

Later in the day, we met up with RedHackt and devoured seemingly unhealthy amounts of raw fish at a Japanese restaurant named Hasaki, which is the best around there I'm told. My favorite will always be the all-you-can-eat one down here, though.

Anyway, I had a fun few days up there, which is good.


:. Saturday, June 25, 2005 at 03:01:38 PM EST

I'm leaving in about an hour to catch a flight to New York for my cousin's 16th birthday party. For whatever reason, my family up there makes a big deal about sweet 16s. The day after her party tomorrow, I'm going to meet up with my friend Emmanuel who runs 2600 in the city to hang out for the day. I'm really looking forward to that, since I haven't seen the guy in a year!

I'll be back Tuesday around noon I think, just in case you were wondering. Seeya!

Update: I'm now at the airport using their free Wi-Fi, which is pretty cool. I just thought I'd share that with you all, oh, and my sister got pulled aside for extra security checks because her necklace had a metal cross on it. I was very happy to hear that she wasn't a terrorist, because honestly, these days, you never know. I mean, sure she is just a teenage girl wearing clothes so tight she couldn't possibly conceal any sort of weapon, but I'd rather sacrifice privacy for a false sense of security any day. Yeah fucking right...


:. Sunday, June 19, 2005 at 12:28:10 PM EST

So yeah, today is Father's Day. You know, Father's day wasn't even a holiday until years after Mother's Day was. Oh well. Anyway, without further hesitation, I present to you the poem that I wrote my dad for Father's Day...

To be a good father, what must one do?
Is it buying me lots of stuff on my birthday?
Is it letting me go visit my sister at the zoo?
Is it asking me to vacuum the pool in your oh so splendid way?
Is it making sure I get up by 6:15 for shool EVERY SINGLE DAY?
Is it teaching me how this screwed up world works?
Is it making sure that in it, I do not get hurt?
Maybe its playing baseball, or seeing Star Wars with me...
Maybe its using very few dishes when you cook, something I like indeed.
Whatever it may be, and it certainly isn't just one thing,
I want you to know how much love and comfort that you bring.
Thus, this is father's day, and rightfully so,
And for being the best dad ever, I want to tell you that
I love you so!

Its not too bad, hm? Oh brother, I'm a poet.


:. Friday, June 10, 2005 at 02:39:14 PM EST

Yesterday, I finished taking my last, second semester exam. I was supposed to take them all weeks ago, but when everyone else who WASN'T suspended got out of school and started having fun all day, I lost track. It feels really good to get them out of the way, despite how I may have done on a few of them. Failing any would completely suck, because that would mean that I'd have to make up the second semester of that class in Credit Lab after school.

Anyway, keep on keepin' on, everyone. Peace.

Update: Support Derek's future existence, buy this.


:. Saturday, June 04, 2005 at 12:01:34 AM EST

The Smiths are my third favorite band of all time, only behind by The Beatles and Radiohead.

You know... when you're sitting around at home, wondering WHY, or WHAT, or for Christ's sake WHEN, you put on The Smiths... you put on Morrissey. The greatest lyricist of all time, Steven Patrick Morrissey, accompanied by the sadness of guitarist Johnny Marr's rolling chords, quite simply hits me like nothing else. If you know them then you know what I'm talking about. Its off this planet, I tell you.

Its insane to think that these guys sold tickets faster than The Beatles with absolutely no publicity. Have you ever seen people at a Smiths or Morrissey show? The fans all want to touch him, hoping to be blessed or something. Its a bit ridiculous, but I can understand it. If you've never heard the music, then pick up The Queen is Dead at the store or go download it.. or something. Just hear it. If you like it, which I hope you do, then grab the rest of their and Morrissey's stuff. Just don't be a whore afterwards...

Anyway, its late and I have SATs tomorrow, again. Time to crash.

Oh, and for those of you interested, my Smiths and Morrissey collection. Remember: Sharing is caring, fuck the RIAA.


:. Wednesday, June 01, 2005 at 05:24:47 PM EST

Not only is a photo ID terribly easy to forge, but no "terrorist" on Earth is going to go through the legal process of getting an ID and registering with the state using his real information. From SATs to flying at the airport, photo IDs are required everywhere, so I decided to finally get one made at the DMV today.

The Bible is intruiging, especially the Book of Revelation. Here is an excerpt:

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." (Revelation 13:16—18)

I really wish somebody could come along and either prove or disprove The Bible just to settle my mind. While that person is at it, they might as well shed some light on that other mystery... the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Any insight would do, just so long as its not the number '42' .


:. Tuesday, May 31, 2005 at 11:25:44 PM EST

...enjoying Mother Nature to the fullest.



Everbody is pretty great, except for when I puked a lot last night, that was gross.


:. Tuesday, May 31, 2005 at 03:18:38 PM EST

So last night I saw Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith with my dad. Jesus Christ in Heaven, what a terrific movie! Every second of it was action packed, and that Hayden Christensen played his role of Anakin Skywalker this time around very well, as did Natalie Portman as Padmé.

Now, I've been a fan of Star Wars ever since I was a little kid watching my VHS trilogy set of Episodes IV, V and VI. Its easy to say that the original three films were the best, however, I sincerely beleive that Episode III comes pretty close to matching them. Somehow, even though they already know exactly whats to become of Obi-Wan, Padmé, Anakin and Palpatine, everyone in the audience remains glued to the silver screen, on the edge of their seat. Lucas just has that amazing creative power.

I won't say anymore about the film, since I suspect most of you have either already seen it or plan on seeing it soon. Oh... and don't watch the bootleg before going to the theater, that just wouldn't be doing the movie justice ;-)


:. Saturday, May 28, 2005 at 06:57:33 PM EST

Ah... yes... Summer vacation is upon me. Its funny, I redid the back and frontend for this site just before the last day of school last year, which I wrote about in the first post of the new site.

What is odd about this year's vacation is that I have already been out of school for two weeks because of my suspension, and I still have to makeup my exams in June. They robbed me of normalcy. Bastards.

Anyway, I've had fun staying home suspended, just hanging out. Now that school is no more, everyone else can join me! I'm expecting good things this Summer... good things.

Anyway, I've got to go vacuum the pool. Chores -- hooray! Man, I can't wait for my Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith download to finish. That's gonna rock... hard.

Seeya ;-)


:. Tuesday, May 24, 2005 at 01:08:33 AM EST

From the depths of the dissatisfaction with network television and radio has come podcasts like TWiT and "internet TV shows" like the broken. Tonight, a new show from the old cast of G4-TechTV has been released, and that show is Systm.



I just finished watching the first episode, and I must say that its very geeky and very cool. In this show, Kevin Rose and Dan Huard build a warspying box to scan for unencrypted wireless video cameras. They even found a couple!

For all of you who yearn for a geeky TV show, realize that you won't find one. Instead, check out Systm... NOW!


:. Monday, May 23, 2005 at 06:38:09 PM EST

So yeah, for all of you who have been wondering, I am alive, however, not really kicking. I was suspended last Tuesday from school for 9 days (would have been 10, except there wasn't even 10 days of school left). I'm doing alright, though. I've been home, playing video games, listening to music and studying for my exams that I can start taking Wednesday. Unfortunately, I can only get four exams out of the way from this Wednesday to Friday at the most. For one reason or another, I'm not allowed on campus with other students. So, while everybody else is celebrating the wonderful thought of not having to see our hellschool for three months, my head will be haunted with the knowledge that I have to return there in June to finish off two exams. I suppose that's not too bad, considering what happened...

That being said, I appreciate everyone's kind words this past week, and the time taken to get me review sheets and notes from my teachers.

Now that the horror and scare of my suspension has passed and my head is clear, I've started to look forward to the summer ahead... parties, friends and all :-)


:. Thursday, May 19, 2005 at 01:33:59 PM EST

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:. Thursday, May 05, 2005 at 09:23:51 PM EST

Today in history class we watched the key courtroom scene in Oliver Stone's film, JFK. Then we watched a 15 minute or so CNN short on the assasination.

Stone's film, as those of you who are familiar with it know, focuses on Jim Garrison's case accusing the C.I.A of assasinating President John F. Kennedy. I'm glad that this film was shown, even though it somewhat skews Garrison's actual case and fails to mention many key pieces of evidence and speculation that show clear holes in the government's official story.

The collective decision made that day in 1963 to drive Kennedy down a different street than originally intended, giving the assasins a much better shot at the President, was ignored today in class. The fact that the Warren Commision was headed by the head of the C.I.A was also ignored. In addition, the fact that the Commision never used actual autopsy photographs during their "investigation", but instead mere drawings, along with the fact that the mayor of the mayor of Dallas, TX, where Kennedy was assasinated, had a brother, Charles Cabell, who was the former C.I.A director until getting fired after the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion were ignored. Lastly, the fact that several key frames were found missing in the government's official release of the Abraham Zapruder Film, which the government admits to, was ignored.

Its been 42 years and still no truth. Our government will lead us to believe that a single bullet left several wounds in both Conally and Kennedy. A single bullet shot through one human wrist shows more dammage than the "magic bullet" that allegedly penetrated both Kenney and Conally several times. Regardless of the facts surrounding the bullet, and the fact that the difference in height and seating between the two passengers could have made part of the Magic Bullet Theory more plausible, there is no way that Oswald shot Kennedy in the front of the head from the book repository facing the back of the President. Just as the many witnesses to the assasination have said, there were multiple gunmen.

The CNN short we watched didn't do a damn thing to try to prove that Oswald was, without a shadow of a doubt, the lone gunman. Instead, it simply attempted to discredit Garrison and all of his key witnesses. There exists no real proof that Oswald acted alone. Its likely that there were many people involved in the assasination, each "hired", or in other words installed to look as if they were hired by somebody not from the inside of the government, each with a very easily attackable background, thus making them an easy target and getting support from the American public with little or no effort. Oswald didn't get to say much, since he was shot just by Jack Ruby just 48 hours after his arrest. Ruby was a crook, and it would seem another man planted to throw off the notion that the assasination was executed from within the highest ranks in our government. I don't buy the ridiculous scenarios that the government has tried selling us. That was an easy conclusion to come to. I simply had to use my head and not fear learning something that would shake my learned reality. I've observed time and time again people refusing to even listen to anything that would lead them to believe that their government has been even slightly less than entirely honest with them. Its unfortunate, to say the least.

Mountains of additional evidence disproving the goverment's official story on how and by who President John F. Kennedy was assasinated is out there. If you'd like me to make you a copy of a film I have called The Jim Garrison Files, please ask. The truth is important, and the truth is the assasination was an inside job. Presently, that same C.I.A that Kennedy was planning to abolish shortly after his assasination answers to nobody.


:. Sunday, May 01, 2005 at 09:21:51 AM EST

That up there won't make a bit of sense unless you're either familiar with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams or if you've seen the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. I happened to fall into the group of the latter. I've started reading the first book, though.

If you don't believe me, look to the right.

Damn... $9 for a ticket.

When I finish the first book, I'll be able to post about how it compared to the movie. I've read that the film leaves out some of the best things from the book, though I can't say for sure. If you like science-fiction and a good story, I suggest you read the books, as well.


:. Saturday, April 30, 2005 at 07:02:20 PM EST

I built my first computer when I first switched to Linux over three years ago. In that computer, I put a mere 30 GB fo storage space, thinking that I likely would use Windows for all of my media needs. Little did I know that applications like MPlayer were far better than anything you could find with Microsoft (yes, I'm aware they've since ported MPlayer to Win32). Over these past years with that new computer, I've accumulated tons of music, movies, TV shows and games, causing me to buy an additional 80 GB hard disk. This morning, I noticed that I only had about 18 GB free on it, so decided to swap it out with a 160 GB disk that I got for Christmas and haven't used yet. Linux showed the drive as actually only being 150 GB, which is usually what happens. Hard drive manufacturers are evil... sigh. Anyway, I made 2 GB of that 150 into swap space, leaving me with a total of 2.2 GB of swap on this machine :)



Woooo!

That being said, I also rewrote a bunch of the backend for the site about a week ago. For those of you who don't know, http://backdrifts.net is all Perl. I've eliminated all system calls in my scripts and made a few things less system-specific, in case I get a new server someday down the line. I must thank my buddy faint for some of the insecurities he found with my url parameters.


:. Saturday, April 23, 2005 at 01:14:49 PM EST

When I was in the 5th grade, some friends and I discovered ZDTV, a television station which broadcasted technology-related programming all day, every day. While the station usually aired shows talking about things I was already savvy on in my later years, at first, shows like the old Screen Savers and the old Call For Help, which has been started up again in Canada, offered mountains of information. Even though I stopped learning from the shows, they remained very entertaining. Leo Laporte and Kate Botello were the original hosts of The Screen Savers. Eventually Kate left for the network's video game show, and Patrick Norton joined the ranks.

Years later, ZDTV was renamed to TechTV. Early into 2004, Comcast bought TechTV and laid off all of their San Fransisco staff, which included Leo, Pat and others.

The network is now known as G4TV, consisting of mostly mediocre mainstream video game bullshit. What's worse than showing video games from a shallow, business-oriented point of view is that enough people must have prefered it, meaning the ratings went up, in order to have Comcast to do what they did. The two decent shows that remain are X-Play, which has remained pretty stable and sane ever since the days of ZDTV, and The Screen Savers, which has been renamed to Attack of the Show.

The spirit that ZDTV and even TechTV once had are dead and gone, thanks to the dollar. None of it makes the least bit of sense until expressed in dollars and cents, does it? These days, aside from the two good shows that remain on what's now G4TV, Leo Laporte and some other past and present network people have put together ROTTS, which stands for Revenge of The Screen Savers. Officially, its called Revenge of the Bleep because the bastards over at G4 would send a cease and desist to ROTTS for using the name "Screen Savers" in the title. Its amazing to me how none of them feel hostility towards G4. I suppose its different being on the other side of the camera, but from the television viewer's perspective, we were robbed. In addition to ROTTS, Kevin Rose and Dan Huard have put together a great little show called thebroken. Again, not too much new info for me, but still highly entertaining. They're supposed to be coming out with a new show called Systm (yes, its without an 'e') sometime soon, which I'm looking forward to.

When all is said and done, ZDTV/TechTV gave me some good times that I will never forget. What's past is past, so I guess its time to look ahead. Doing so won't be too tough, thanks to thebroken, ROTSS and the anticipated Systm. I recommend that you give all of these things a try if you were ever a fan of the old network. Remembering the past is as equally important as moving on, so check out old this out. These are supposed to be old video clips from the early days of ZDTV, but none of the URLs work. The images alone broght a smile to my face, though :)


:. Friday, April 15, 2005 at 01:51:35 PM EST

I've just returned from the 2005 Annual Palm Beach County School District Programming Competition, where my team won first place. Wooo! I was merely a fill-in for somebody who dropped out, though I did help out on a few programs.

The contest consisted of 30 problems and 3 point-levels, each containing 10 problems. We were the only team to get a 3 pointer done, thanks to Guliano and Mike. Its funny, they alone could have placed first. I won't let it get me down, though, considering I'm one class below them and was there to fill-in.

So, today has been a good day. No school, got to do some programming, and free Pizza Hut. Next year's competition should be fun. Mike and I will be in it for sure, so we've got to recruit two more coders. Are you geek enough? :-)

Update: I just realized that this is backdrifts.net's 100th post! Hip hip, hooray!


:. Wednesday, April 13, 2005 at 12:29:54 AM EST

Yep, that's right! Thanks to this new Hauppauge TV tuner card, I don't even have to get my lazy ass out of my computer chair to watch television! Ah... the epitome of laziness.



That's me watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force on a nice little window in the corner of my LCD(s). Awesomeness.

I advise that you all go out and purchase these sweet $20 cards and enjoy the pleasures of watching your favorite shows on your computer and recording them, too.


:. Saturday, April 09, 2005 at 05:15:45 PM EST

I've been meaning to make this post for a while. I feel bad that I've procrastinated, but better late than never, I guess.



Last Saturday, March 19, 2005, John Delorean, the revolutionary behind the DeLorean Motor Company died in Northern Ireland at the age of 80.

In 1981, John followed his dream and started the DeLorean Motory Company. His factories got off their feet through public money given to them by the government in hopes of creating more jobs during a recession. Only 9,000 cars rolled off the production lines at the end of 1982. Despite the car's alleged "failure", it was featured in the Back to the Future trilogy as Doc Brown's time machine.

"The problem was he did not have the money to back his big idea for a very different type of sports car," said BBC Northern Ireland's business editor James Kerr, who describes John DeLorean as a "talented maverick". If only the money were there and he wasn't dragged through trial regarding the acquited drug dealing charges, John would have gone far.

You will be remembered, John. Thanks for the dream, it means a lot to me and many others.


:. Thursday, April 07, 2005 at 11:39:19 PM EST

If I ever have to write another 10 page research paper with an outline and works cited page for high school again, I'll lose it completely.

Speaking of people who have lost it completely, let me share with you the code red lockdown drill my school put us through today. The plan was that sometime between second and third period, a dean would use a megaphone, along with a series of bells, to warn us of the code red alert. We, the students, were then supposed to wait in our third period class if we had reached it yet, or find the nearest classroom and stay there, instead. The drill only lasted a few minutes, but so does one's life after they've been shot in the heart, so really the amount of time that the drill lasted means nothing as far as how annoying it was. Oh the things I compare... no matter, the drill struck me in a weird way. It wasn't as if they created a threat and had us act on it like they did two years ago with the supposed guy near campus with a handgun that turned out to be a videotape, yet I still felt like cattle. Perhaps I'm slightly paranoid from that letter they sent home after the videotape incident explaining that if our area was ever subject to a red alert, we, the students, would be taken to an undisclosed location for safety, not to be returned to our parents until all was well. Hopefully they weren't planning on taking us to a FEMA camp (1, 2).

Let's just hope my school doesn't adopt the DHS Color-Coded Threat System.

Anyway, tomorrow is the last day of the week, and this weekend seems promising. Bye for now.


:. Tuesday, April 05, 2005 at 03:57:35 PM EST

Friday, my research paper is due. Ten pages of hell, I say. Anyway, I've put together a tiny guide on making sure that I focus on the task at hand...

• ifconfig eth0 down
• umount /mnt/media
• rmmod joydev

No internet, no music, no games. Sigh...


:. Saturday, April 02, 2005 at 10:26:37 AM EST

Haha, yes! You all thought that I really did receive a cease and desist letter from the RIAA, didn't you? Its likely that you didn't, but you have to give a guy credit for trying, right? Right.

Anyway, every April Fool's Day, I do something to this site. Usuaully its a bit more creative than what I did this year, but oh well, nobody comes here anyway...

If you were fooled, let me know, it would give my desolate life meaning...


:. Tuesday, March 29, 2005 at 05:06:02 PM EST

Today, the Palm Beach County School District's DNS servers were "hacked". Either a man-in-the-middle attack went down, or somebody poisoned the DNS! Commonly-visited sites, such as http://www.nytimes.com, http://www.google.com and http://www.cnn.com were all redirected to either porn sites or Christian pages. Yes... quite the scheme. I'm glad somebody around here still has a sense of humor.

So, if anybody at school, including a teacher, tells you that all of these website were simultaneous "hacked", then please inform them that they're wrong. I proved this in class today using the CGIProxy script on my site and visiting some of the sites mentioned above.

Oh yeah, and it wasn't me... I swear. (No really, it wasn't)


:. Saturday, March 26, 2005 at 02:16:08 PM EST

This Spring Break was quite action packed. We laughed, we cried, we sang, we passed out and we had a blast. Many thanks go out to those who hosted the parties and get-togethers. If you drove me around or I slept over your house, then I thank you.

Today is sort of the last day of break, since tomorrow is Easter and I'm occupied with family stuff. Hopefully we can all convince this kid Joe to throw one last party at his house before his parents come back from their vacation. Yeah... that would be cool.

I'd go into detail, but why bother? You won't read it and I don't want to share it. PEACE!

Your friend in time,
Dr. Emmet L. Brown (tell me where that's from and I'll give you five bucks)

Update: This just in... fuck the last night of break. Oh well, there is still tomorrow... Easter?


:. Tuesday, March 22, 2005 at 06:00:32 PM EST

This is stranger than I thought...

I'll tell them anything at all. I know I'll give them more and more. They think I'm on my hands and head. This time, they're much too slow. Six different sides to every lie I say. Its that American voice again. It was never quite like this before. Six different ways, and everyone I'll keep tonight. Six differnet ways go deep inside.


:. Saturday, March 19, 2005 at 02:44:21 AM EST

Our Spring Break is finally upon us. Let the parties and good times roll... ROOOOOLLLLLL.

What a relief it is to know that we've only got one quarter left for this school year!

Seeya around ;-)


:. Monday, March 14, 2005 at 07:38:49 PM EST

Oh, the joys of Pi Day! Now, let's all get drunk with the math team at school and have a ball. Go !!


:. Saturday, March 12, 2005 at 07:49:38 PM EST

... take me anywhere, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care.

I cry into the night for somebody to save me from this stomach virus. Its Saturday night, do you know where your immune system is?

Update: Eh, yeah, I upgraded the server to OpenBSD 3.6 last night, but sort of messed up, hence all of the downtime. But now the site is back up. Enjoy...


:. Thursday, March 10, 2005 at 02:50:14 PM EST

While messing around with my laptop earlier, I realized that I had no easy way to get access to all of the wallpapers I've crated or collected over the years. Some of them are here on my main machine, others are scattered on my server or laptop. So, in a brief moment of unlaziness, I brought them all together and put them in an album here. Click here to check them out, or visit the Pictures section and click Wallpapers at the bottom.

In other unlazy news, I finally passed out all of my computer flyers in my neighborhood. Once I reached the first mailbox, though, I realized that a single piece of paper is too thin to stick inbetween a mailbox flag, so I had to go back inside and fold ALL 200 OF THEM in half. I went back outside, only to find out that folding them once just wasn't enough, but instead of going back and folding them all in half again, I decided to just do it each time I reached a mailbox. Hopefully I get some calls from people who need help with their computers... being broke sucks.

Update: I just got my first call about the flyer... looks like things just may work out and I can avoid getting a job at the mall!


:. Tuesday, March 08, 2005 at 06:50:41 PM EST

For those of you who give a damn, you'll be glad to know that Slackware Linux has officially removed Mozilla and Netscape from the release tree and adopted the world's greatest web browser, Firefox, to its current branch! An official Thunderbird package for Slackware has also been released. I'm happy because I am, in fact, a geek.

For those of you who could care less about all of that, just know this: Internet Explorer is crap. If you want tabbed browsing (that is, a bunch of tabs within your browser for all of the sites you're currently visiting rather than accumulating tons of browser windows in your Start Menu), pop-up blocking and protection from spyware and adware, then for God's sake do yourself a favor and download it. The installation is easy, just click 'Next' a few times and you're done. But please don't do it for me, do it for yourself ;)

With that, I am off... Chemistry test tomorrow. Die.


:. Friday, March 04, 2005 at 05:24:44 PM EST

So here I am in Jupiter again. For those of you who don't know, I've been coming here just about every other weekend ever since my mom moved up here. Its not home, let's leave it at that.

Anyway, nothing extraordinary is planned for this weekend, however, I am writing this to inform all of you that I stupidly FORGOT MY CELL PHONE AT HOME, so don't call it! If you want to talk, message me and I'll give you the number to call.


:. Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 11:18:09 PM EST

So I had meat for the first time in about three years yesterday. A humble visit to the mall somehow turned into a violent, carnivorous flesh-fest with a turkey sandwitch. I just had chicken with dinner, and I'm not sure how I feel. I just spent a few minutes looking at pictures of baby chicks, feeling guilty. I'm really lost on this one, so I figured just not eating meat would do the trick, much like athiesm exists as an alternative for the nonbeliever.

What to do, oh what to do...


:. Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 11:23:36 PM EST

About three years ago, my 80 GB Maxtor drive died, causing me to lose EVERYTHING without so much as a goodbye. Among this "everything" were pictures of mostly stupid nothingnesses. While going through some old burned CDs earlier, I came across one labeled "Pics" and decided to see what was on it. Lo' and behold, it contained all of the pictures from that old, dead and buried drive. Most of them wouldn't interest anyone except myself, so I just through them into my Random section. I did find, however, pictures from my trip to Universal Studios Florida from 2002 where I met up with people from BTTF.com. We had a blast talking about our beloved Back to the Future trilogy and riding the ride over and over. I decided that the few pictures I took during that trip were worth an album in the Pictures section. To check them out, follow this link. I'm that skinny kid with the shaved head. I used to look weird, right? I probably still do look weird... oh well.

In addition to those pictures, I found the ones Jeff and I took when we replaced my old, boring Dreamcast shell with this fancy blue one I orderd from some dealer in Hong Kong. Since I'm in love with my Dreamcast, I decided this was worth an album, as well. For these pictures, follow this link. Those are Jeff's bodily close-ups, by the way. I was behind the camera.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy looking at these pictures like I do. The time-capturing power that photographs has is amazing, if you ask me.


:. Saturday, February 19, 2005 at 09:19:41 PM EST

Juuuust kidding.

So anyway, I'm up here in Jupiter (the city) visiting my mom for the weekend. Tonight, we and a few family friends that came over for dinner decided to make a fire in the back yard using this clay thing we have. We threw WAY too much wood in, creating something probably illegal. Observe...



So for all of you who wonder what it is that I do up here every other weekend, now you know: I set things on fire. When I'm not doing that, I'm stepping in red ant piles, like I just did. My feet are painfully itchy right now, so I'll be going....

AHHH!! Holy shit... just as I was about to post this, a massive explosion went off... TONS of fireworks! I thought for sure it was the Soviets finally getting back at us after all these years. Okay... my feet really hurt, bye.


:. Monday, February 14, 2005 at 08:21:25 PM EST

Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday? The history of Valentine's Day -- and its patron saint -- is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men -- his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl -- who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It's no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

-- From The History Channel

(Sorry, I was way too lazy to write a post this evening. But hey, at least you recieved a good lesson on today's holiday!)


:. Monday, February 07, 2005 at 09:28:06 PM EST

The first Slackware release of the new year reached the torrents and mirrors today, and its indeed the best ever! Version 10.1 kicks much ass, and after all these years the distribution has stayed true to the ideals of "providing the latest popular software while retaining a sense of tradition, providing simplicity and ease of use alongside flexibility and power." Yeah... those words in quotes are not my own, they're from the official site.


Long live Slack!

Anyway, I apologize for all of the geeky posts lately... I think I have only three readers that can understand them. I promise my next post will be one for all to enjoy :)


:. Friday, January 28, 2005 at 05:45:26 PM EST

So midnight this past Wednesday, I decided to upgrade my Linux kernel from 2.4.29 to 2.6.10. Boy what a stupid idea that was.

After everything was configured, compiled and updated, I rebooted to find a fairly working kernel. Obviously things like ALSA and NVIDIA drivers had to be recompiled, however, I did not expect my machine to be running at nearly half-speed without the ability to even load sound card modules. I was let down, but nothing had been lost... or so I thought. I then rebooted my machine and selected the old kernel from LILO. I got some crazy VFS error stating that my root file-system could not be mounted. That really scared me, as you can imagine. I messed around with initrd for about 30 minutes before giving up, backing up and reinstalling, this time from the Slackware-Current tree instead of 10.0. As of *right now* my machine is back to how it was, FINALLY :) !!

I guess I should consider myself lucky that my attempted upgrade only forced a disk format and a reinstall. It could have been a lot worse. After all is said in done, I guess its true what they say; to lose weight or limit stupid computer mistakes, avoid staying up late, because when you do, you tend to eat more and think ahead less.


:. Thursday, January 20, 2005 at 09:38:06 PM EST

So yeah, I got a laptop for Christmas (thanks Mom), however, until last night, it ran that Winey Dowz operating system. I'd get those fun blue screens at seemingly random moments because of poorly-written motherboard drivers and the like. I finally couldn't take it anymore and devoted an entire afternoon to installing and configuring my favorite distribution, Slackware Linux. Check out the screenshot. Everything on the laptop is working great, except for wireless. If i use the wlanctl-ng command to set my SSID, WEP settings, etc., everything works fine. I cannot use iwconfig, though. Kismet uses iwconfig to do all of its magic, so I'm quite frustrated. I'm using a D-Link DWL-650 card with the linux-wlan-ng drivers and the prism2_cs module. If anyone has any idea as to what may be the cause of my wireless-woes, please, leave a comment.

If no solution is found, then I may just do the lazy thing and buy a new WiFi card. I'm in the market for a new one, anyway. One that I can hook a cantenna up to... mmm...

Update: Silly me, Kismet has wlan-ng drivers! It turns out iwconfig isn't even supposed to work. My laptop is officially complete :)


:. Friday, January 14, 2005 at 04:35:45 PM EST

Well, backdrifts.net is now RSS-enabled! If you're using Firefox, take a look at the bottom right of your browser window... see the thingy? Well, click on it, and then click "Subscribe to 'backdrifts.net RSS feed.'" Bookmark it anywhere you please, then sit back and watch as you're able to easily check out my site's latest post from your bookmark menu :) If you haven't switched to Firefox for some nonsensical, and perhaps fascist, reason, then you can use an Internet Explorer toolbar program, such as RSS Explorer, to subscribe to the feed by clicking the RSS link on the menu at the top right. Feel free to use it however you see fit, including on your own page.

At the moment, the feed only displays the latest post, however, I am going to be adding to it very soon. I want to have it display not only the lastest post, but the last comment left and the newest photo album from the picture section. All in good time, I suppose.

Update: I've added a new item to the RSS feed; a link to the song I'm currently listening to, much like the one linked to on upper-right-hand-side of the site. If you've got any suggestions for feed items, please leave a comment.


:. Sunday, January 09, 2005 at 08:46:14 PM EST

Probably not...

If you've been waiting for those pictures I promised, then wait no longer, for I have posted all of them here. My trip was a blast, though I missed my friends, shower and bed back home. You see, living conditions in our camper at Disney's Camp Wilderness were rather cramped. Being the tall person I am, I had particular trouble with the shower. The head was level with my chin, so I had to crouch down to get my hair wet. It was quite uncomfortable. I felt like someone was watching me the whole time, and the hot water ran out after about 5 minutes! On top of that, the camper broke down 30 miles from home on the ride back. The engine exploded... or something. No matter, we ended up broken down at an interesection getting honked at by everyone that passed by. The important thing is that we got home safe, though.

Oh, and for all of you fellow tin-foil-hat-wearers out there, I saw tons of chemtrails in Orlando. It was unbelieveable. I took a few pictures, so take a look if you're interested.


:. Wednesday, January 05, 2005 at 02:11:19 PM EST

That's just where I'm headed... I think. See, whether or not Walt Disney World is such a place has not yet been decided. Its so fake and... happy, you know?

Anyway, my sisters, my mom and her new husband and I are all heading there in a few hours. I won't be back until Saturday night, so if anyone for some reason needs to speak with me, I do have a cell phone.

If your winter break is boring the hell out of you, then you can at least get excited over the pictures that will be posted here upon my return. See, there is reason to live after all!


:. Saturday, January 01, 2005 at 04:57:17 PM EST

That's cool, then :)

Last night was both fun and rough. I am spending the first day of 2005 recovering. Hopefully I do...


:. Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 01:56:29 AM EST

This Christmas, I got everything I asked the 'rents for and more. My mom got me a laptop, among other things, and my dad got my the two 17" LCDs that I've been longing for. On top of those two things that I asked for, I got a 160 GB hard drive and a very nice, stand-up, wooden record player. Ah... Dear Prudence never sounded so good :) If not for my split households, I wouldn't have gotten all of that great stuff. So having your parents divorced is actually cool, right? I hope you weren't thinking that, oh loyal reader of mine...

Everyone was here today, smiling and having fun, so you could say that I had a terrific Christmas. Since I'm such a complainer, I'm going to have to throw in the fact that I feel as far away as can be from those who I'd really like to have spent the evening with.

As I contemplate all of this, I shall be enjoying my wonderful, emotion-numbing, radiation-emitting stuff.


:. Thursday, December 23, 2004 at 01:10:19 PM EST

After a week of grueling midterm exams, I am very pleased to announce the last school-day of 2004! Everyone, enjoy your winter break :)


:. Saturday, December 18, 2004 at 02:01:29 AM EST

Today was Katy and Marcelle's 17 birthday party. The whole thing was sort of disbanded to reasons I'm not sure of. I had fun, reglardless. Originally, the party was supposed to be that of the costume sort, however, everybody knows that nearly all attendees of costume parties wimp out and don't dress up. I was not going to let this happen to me. So, today after school, Killian, Ron and Kat came over. Kat teased my hair, making it stick up just like my costume-character, Robert Smith. Ron also joined in on the action, perhaps doing the most long-term damage, heh. Next, Katharine applied the eyeliner and lipstick. The improbable was done; I was transformed into the man that is Robby Smith... observe...



My hair was destroyed in the rain, but I still had a blast dressed up. Plus, boys don't cry...


:. Wednesday, December 15, 2004 at 10:56:25 PM EST

Chemistry oh Chemistry,
Why are you trying to kill me?
Crossing and crissing,
Taking notes and listening,
Your polyatomic ions leave me a wreck
And your unbearably long assignments leave me asking, "What the heck?"
You kick me wen I'm down,
You're a guarenteed frown.
I'm all give,
You're all take.
My efforts are futile
And you're my least favorite mistake.
I've one last thing to say about this hell
So listen up and listen well;
If I could wish away just one class,
You can bet your bottom dollar it would be your fucking ass.


:. Saturday, December 11, 2004 at 03:14:08 AM EST

THIS SITE IS A WASTE

Yours Truly,
The Only Living Boy in New York


:. Wednesday, December 01, 2004 at 06:22:00 PM EST

Today, my mother, sisters and I embarked on our annual Christmas tree ornament hunt. Ever since my first Christmas, the family has gone to this one Christmas store to pick out one ornament each for the tree. Last year, I picked this one. Cute, ha? My ornament this year is a bit odd... but I like it.



PS: I'm not really a dentist.

Cheers!


:. Monday, November 29, 2004 at 10:00:59 PM EST

Like something straight out of the Soviet Union, my bus driver today informed us, the loyal riders, that he will now be requiring a school ID be presented by every student every morning in order for them to ride the bus. There are several issues on the table here. Most importantly, we don't even have student IDs yet. I have a feeling this won't stop the driver from enforcing this policy, though. Furthermore, even if we did have student IDs, a bus driver working for the government driving students to a government institution is not allowed to create his own Gestapo-like rules when he feels necessary. Perhaps the threat of non-students riding the bus in the morning for a free ride to a school that they don't attend is what's got the driver acting up. I can pretty much guarentee that nobody in the history of the school bus has ever taken one for no reason other than to end up at a school that they are ten years too old to ride. When asked about this situation, the dean at school in charge of the busses said "Not to worry." Its official, my bus driver has officially gone off the deep-end.

"This isn't Russia," my friend Alex told him this morning after he told us about his student ID scheme. So don't ask us to "Show you our papers!" I added.

Hah...


:. Sunday, November 28, 2004 at 07:05:57 PM EST

Won't you come out to play?
Greet the brand new day...

The sun is up,
the sky is blue,
its beautiful,
and so are you...

Dear Prudence, open up your eyes,
see the sunny skies...

The wind is low,
the birds will sing,
that you are part of everything, Dear Prudence.

Let me see you smile,
like a little child...

The clouds will be a daisy chain,
so let me see you smile again...

Dear Prudence.


:. Thursday, November 25, 2004 at 01:56:30 PM EST

Ah Thanksgiving... Yes, it is upon us. The day after Thanksgiving is, for some orchestrated reason, the biggest shopping day of the year. This doesn't make a bit of sense, but since when did things have to make sense to work in this country?

Anyway, I'm here in Jupiter with my mom and some family friends enjoying a lot of great food. I won't be touching that turkey, though :) In fact, I encourage all of you to give the meat-eating a rest just this once. If I'm not doing a good job convincing you, then perhaps this guilt-instilling image will do the trick:



Just kidding, turkeys can't hold up signs. Time to eat, be well all.


:. Monday, November 22, 2004 at 08:53:51 PM EST

On January 31st, 1992, NBC conducted a telephone survey... asking American citizens who they thought killed President John F. Kennedy. NBC recieved 30,000 calls in 3 hours. 51% said the C.I.A did it.



Lee Harvey Oswald killed nobody alone.

"We seek a free flow of information... a nation that is afraid to let the people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation afraid of its people."

-- President John F. Kennedy (Febuary, 1962)


:. Saturday, November 20, 2004 at 12:49:49 AM EST

The other day, my sister borrowed her friend's yearbook from last school-year. While looking through it, she found the video yearbook DVD. "How cool," she must have thought. Anyway, her, Alex and I ended up watching it discovering that both Alex and I appeared in the various shots of the hallways. Don't believe me? Well, then feast your eyes on this low resolution image that looks like something Colon Powell would try to pass off as proof that Iraq owns "weapons of mass destruction" ...



See, I'm a movie star ;)


:. Friday, November 19, 2004 at 04:56:40 PM EST

I just got off the phone with Nurse Reberta. She is in charge of the county's public health care. I am very glad that she called me back and in concerned about what students are saying. She even said that I am the first person to call and complain about the weigh-in program. I told the nurse why I disagree with the program. In response, she said that purpose for the program is to collect information about how much students tend to change in weight from school-year to school-year and to encourage nutrition with students. Additionally, she said that the nurses are required to tell all of the students randomlly chosen that they can return to class if they do not want to be weighed. I told her that perhaps this isn't hapenning at some schools as it should be, since students who have kidney issues, causing obesity, are being weighed, regardless of their condition. I could not confirm that either was happening, so she said that if it is reported that it is happening, I should notify her immediately. I feel much better now that she knows that there are people out there who feel a certain way about their flawed program. BMI test are inaccurate when dealing with people of high muscle mass, and the ability for a student to decline the weight test completely throws off the research which is asking, "Are students getting more obese over time?"

Furthermore, the nurse and I spoke about the drug-sniffing dogs present at our schools from time to time. She feels its a good idea, since apparently schools are just drowning in a sea of drugs. I told her that I saw it as something straight out of Nazi Germany. "School should be a wholesome place," I told her, "Not some place where you feel threatened and intimidated." I just don't think she sees the big picture and what sacrifycing little-by-little does in the end. 1984 is Heaven on Earth compared to where we're headed. But that can all change, you know...


:. Wednesday, November 17, 2004 at 11:05:17 AM EST

I'm in my first period class, Computer Programming II Honors, and prior to coming to class, I visited the school nurse responsible for carrying out the now-verified random weigh-ins of the Freshman class, which I'm glad I'm not part of. To my surprise and delight, the school nurse is as upset at this policy as I am. She says the only way that the county will stop this nonsense is if a big group of parents spoke out against it. Well, I encourage parents in Palm Beach County to do just that.

If you feel that the actions of the county are wrong, please let them know. Palm Beach County's toll-free number is 1-866-930-8402.

Update: I've just spoke with The Healthcare District of Palm Beach County regarding the issue, since it turns out they're the ones responsible for the program. The woman I was supposed to speak with had already left the office, however, I left my name and number and was assured she would call me back at her earliest convenience. Anyawy, I told the other woman who answered on her behalf how I and my school's nurse felt about the issue. You see, little by little they take these liberties with us which, at the time, seem minute and inconsequential, however, they eventually lead to a complete control over the "weak."


:. Tuesday, November 16, 2004 at 07:27:13 PM EST

My school, like several other schools I've read about, is adopting something I like to call the "Did you know that you're fat?" program. This program involves the staff of the school in question taking children out of class, whom are chosen "randomlly," to undergo a weight check. When I first heard that this program existed, I laughed, but then became very upset. Why upset? Well, think about it for a moment... school is supposed to do one thing; educate. Most schools do a decent job at that, however, some, apparently, feel that's not enough, such as my own. When I found out this program had been adopted by my school, I flipped out.

Imagine being picked on for being chubby all your life. Wouldn't exactly be a self-esteem booster, would it? Well, as if you didn't hear it enough from your parents and peers, you now have the pleasure of hearing it from your own government's local, scholastic institution. If luck has is that you're "randomlly" selected to be weighed in, you can be sure that you'll be receiving a letter at home telling your parents how well you scored on your test. Disgusting behavior on behalf of the school, in my opinion. I did hear from other students at my school that there was no refusing the test, however, I cannot confirm this. Resistance is always an option, but its price is often far too much for most to bear.

It appears that in our "New America," the government can do whatever it damn well pleases in schools. From backpack searches that are protected by laws which somehow override The United STates Constitution, to drug-sniffing dogs on campus ensuring "safety", to even seemingly mandatory weigh ins. This has to stop. Those responsible for this bullying won't get away with it. I am not going to sit and watch as everything wholesome that my country stands for go down the tubes, only for it to be laughed at someday in history books.

They can we sure as hell they will be hearing from me about this tomorrow morning.


:. Tuesday, November 02, 2004 at 08:49:30 AM EST

So, its been a while, hm? Where do I begin...

I guess it would only be right to first explain why the site has been down for so long. The downtime is the direct result of God's tendency of forgetting about little old me. As I've learned, he does this from time to time. Lately, though, things have gone a bit too far, as I'll further explain later. This time, he decided to make two of my servers die in a row. Why? Who knows... This site's original server was a Dell that my sister's friend's dad was going to get rid of. It did its job just fine with a 500 MHz Intel Celeron processor and 160 MB of RAM. The 4 GB disk was lacking, but hey, free is free! When that box mysteriously died, I was forced to use an old 150 MHz Pentium I machine with just 32 MB of RAM that I had lying around. That machine was terribly slow and took nearly 6 hours to compile applications like pork, a text-based AIM client. Subject to a similar fate as the machine before it, that box eventually died. At this point I was really ticked off, so I decided that I should just dish out some cash to build a whole new server. I bought a nice motherboard, a 1.5 GHz AMD Athlon with 256 MB of DDR-RAM and a 30 GB Seagate to store this site and much more. The only thing I went cheap on was a case, which was a BIG mistake. Take it from me, $9 cases are no good -- at all. Okay? Once all of my new hardware arrived, I spent countless hours trying to figure out why the final product wouldn't boot. After much trial and error, I came to learn that the case's faulty power button was to blame. You can imagine how that made me feel. I bought a very nice case afterwards, which is working quite well as of now. It would be criminal to not thank faint for his help with my motherboard's jumper settings, which ultimately let the damn thing boot!

Anyway, you probably knew at least some of that from the temporary downtime page I setup while the server was down.

In other news, a lot has happened since my last post about the eclipse. For one, Halloween. I'm going to make this short -- I dressed up as Jesus and I got candy. For pictures, check out the Halloween 2004 album.

Lastly, and most painful, I got my tonsils removed on November 4th. Let me tell you, life is tough without tonsils. I just don't have that flair that made me a sexy man-beast anymore. Why.. they've got my mojo! Just kidding... but it was damn painful. I'm still feeling it, too. I won't be entirely healed up for quite a while, and until then the scabbing process for one reason or another is causing my breath to smell absolutely terrible. The doctor warned me about it. So if I see you and happen to accidently breathe, just let me know, since I don't want to harm you anymore than you want to harm yourself. Oh, and they gave me all sorts of funny pain killers and drugs. The most powerful one was at the hospital. My parents said that after they gave it to me I started to laugh and sing Ob-La-di Ob-La-Da. Anyway, my experience at the hospital wasn't bad at all, however, I'm definetly feeling the pain now that I'm back home, both in the back of my mouth and in school with all of the makeup work I'm doing.

So with that, I am off... ah, it feels good to be back :)

Oh, and here's proof that I am a hospital-gnome...




:. Wednesday, October 27, 2004 at 11:19:04 PM EST

Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies, because tonight and tomorrow is a full lunar eclipse! This occurrs when the moon is completely shadowed by Earth. The moon passes through Earth's umbra where no light from the Sun can reach it. The red color is a result of Earth's ability to refract light while filtering it. Anyway, without further adoo, I present to you, the loyal readers of this hole in cyber-space, pictures I took of the eclipse earlier this evening...



These pictures aren't amazingly clear, and for this I apologize. The moon is around 384,748 kilometers away from Earth, after all.


:. Wednesday, October 27, 2004 at 04:21:30 PM EST

Today there was a power outage while I was at school and, apparently, it lasted longer than my battery backup could stand. As a result, this server's hard disk got all fscked up, and I had to run FSCK. For the less technically inclined, FSCK stands for file system check. Sadly, the comments for two recent posts (1, 2) posts were lost in the process. If you keep pages cached on your browser and would like to send me the comments made for those two posts, I'd really appreciate it. See the contact section if you don't know how to get a hold of me.

God I hate computers...


:. Sunday, October 24, 2004 at 10:32:06 PM EST

This weekend I attended yet another of motocross race with my mom, her new husband and my sisters. I'm not much for dirt bikes, but I do like spending time with the family. Rather than me talk about all of fun and exciting things I did on my weekend in an RV, I'll show you through pictures. Observe...

        

See, I had tons of fun blowing kisses, sleeping and standing around in my mom's sweater with my big hair!


:. Saturday, October 16, 2004 at 04:55:16 PM EST

Jeff got in last night around 11, and the fun hasn't stopped since. After being back in his neighborhood for only a few hours, he already was wreaking havoc. Just look...



Sigh... but, you've got to love Jeff.

Anyway, tonight we may go see Team America: World Police. I hear its hilarious, so I can't wait. Well, that's about it, seeya!


:. Wednesday, October 13, 2004 at 11:16:39 PM EST

While John "Skull and Bones" Kerry and George "Dubya" Bush were busy preparing for their "debate" that ended only minutes ago, a police officer and his drug-sniffing dog took a visit to Spanish River Community High School.

John Kerry asked America tonight to trust him. Why, I ask, should we, the people, trust men like John Kerry, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and the rest of the "good old boys" when they don't show that same trust towards us in the least? Philip K. Dick, science-fiction author, says, "...the essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens. Any government which assumes that the population is going to do somethign evil has already lots its franchise to govern. The tacic contract between a government and the people governed is that the government will trust the people and the people will trust the government. But once the government begins to mistrust the people it is governing, it loses its mandate to rule because it is no longer acting as a spokesman for the people, but is acting as an agent of persecution."

You see, when the USA PATRIOT Act was passed, we, the people of the United States of America, were seen guilty before proven innocent and our Constitutional rights were disregarded. Due Process isn't an issue in the "New America." You can be held indefinitely without access to a lawyer and without even being told what it is exactly you're being held for. Whatever happened to probable cause, I ask? Somehow, I was a threat to the security of this country because I was over the age of 13 and did not have a photo ID when I flew out of my local airport, resulting in my luggage being taken aside for special inspection by the TSA. Not only was my luggage run through a special machine, which I was repremanded for taking a picture of, but it was further checked by human inspectors who left a nice note letting me know that they had been there. At least they'll do that. The PATRIOT Act doesn't require law enforcement to tell you that they broke into your home while you were out.

I won't stand for it. And I certainly won't stand for it when it happens at my own school. Its bad enough we have armed police offers wondering our campus and patrolling the outside perimeter of the school, but the drug-sniffing dogs just put the icing on the cake. Or should I say, put the poison in the punch? Yes, I believe that better suits the situation. When I first became a student at my school, I was pretty shocked by the dogs, though, I didn't quite have the courage to ask the officer just what he was doing or ask our administration what was going on. Today, however, I made my way over to the officer and politley asked, "Is that a drug-sniffing dog?" "Yeah, dude," he replied. Perhaps the cops think that using new slang will help them connect with the youth on a greater level. Regardless, I gave him a look of discomfort and continued with my questions, which included "have you ever cought any kids with drugs using these dogs?" and "do you catch enough that these measures are worth it?" Yes and yes, I was told. Before I walked away, the officer jokingly asked if I had any drugs on me that I'd like to tell him about. "No," I answered. The whole thing is disgusting, if you ask me. First thing tomorrow morning, I'm going to ask our administration just who is reponsible for the SS and their German Shepherds gnawing at my ankles. I live in the United States of America, not the former-Soviet Union or Oceania circa 1984.


:. Monday, October 11, 2004 at 10:35:05 PM EST

Sure Kerry and Bush's voting records are nearly identical, sure they were both members of the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University, where they made an oath above all oaths to each other, and lastly, sure they're cousins... but for Bush to call Kerry a "flip-flop" is just hilarious.




:. Sunday, October 10, 2004 at 08:57:25 AM EST

So yeah, the site has been down for about 12 hours due to brokeness. I was replacing the web server's old 4 GB disk with a new, lovely 30 GB disk when suddenly the machine refused to boot. I'm still working on that machine, but in the mean time, the site and everyone else's whose sites I hosted are on this old, 150 MHz Pentium I Packard Bell box with 32 MB of ram.



So if you notice the site loading a bit slower than usual, know that the slow machine is why. Hopefully I can fix things. At least I've got a 30 GB disk to work with now. Oh, and I got an UPS the other day, too, so now more random downtime when my local power company feels like bothering it's customers.

Fare you well!


:. Friday, October 08, 2004 at 05:07:44 PM EST

Well, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3715396.stm

Yeah, that's what those "crazy people" were saying a while back. Don't you remember them? The one's who saw it coming. What's new. Read your history books. See, we're in the preparation stage. They're getting you used to it. But you know, it doesn't have to be that way. We are the people. We have the power.

Food for thought:

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

-- Herman Goering, Hitler's designated successor, before being sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials.


:. Monday, October 04, 2004 at 09:39:17 PM EST

You may recall my visit to Jeff's lake house a few months back. It was the last fun thing I did before dreaded school started again. Well, after much procrastination, I finally got the pictures from the trip developed. Actually, my sister got them developed. Either way, here they are.

That four day get-away was great. Sure I got sore as hell from all of the abnormal physical activity I was subject to, but I had fun doing it. There aren't many people in this world that I connect with, or that I trust or hold close, so why, I ask, did one of the best of those people have to move away?


:. Sunday, October 03, 2004 at 03:39:42 PM EST

Those of you who have known me for quite a bit of time remember a time when my room was a shrine, if you will, to the greatest film trilogy ever made. Which film trilogy am I speaking of? Why, none of than Back to the Future!

Earlier today, I was searching on Google for posts that I made years ago on the BTTF.com Message Boards. I searched: "who needs roads" site:bttf.com and stumbled upon this. Apparently, I submitted my collection to this guy a while back and never found out that it was actually posted on his site. You can imagine my surprise.

Just looking at these pictures brings the biggest of smiles to my face. Back to the Future has a weird power over me. In memory of this amazing collection of memorabilia, I have added another album to the Pictures section. Click here to take a look. You know, the only reason I took everything down was because it was too hard to maintain. It's a damn shame...

Oh yeah, and I added lines in between each post to make them easier to read. Ye or ne?

Update: I decided ne on the lines between posts. It would be nice to separate posts better, though.


:. Saturday, October 02, 2004 at 02:06:55 PM EST

Hoorah, I'm 17! Yaaaaaaaay...

That is all,
Derek (world's greatest person)


:. Thursday, September 30, 2004 at 11:36:53 PM EST

Things sure are going on...

I'm spending my weekend at my mother's fiance's house in Jupiter, as I have done several times in the past. Originally, the two were going to have a party in the backyard here for their wedding. I was actually looking forward to it, but due to the recent hurricanes, the ordeal has been reduced to a few family members and a small ceremony. Humbler, indeed; my kind of event. I'm really happy for my mother, since she seems happy, finally. Most important to me, though, is the well-being of my youngest sister, which will definetly be ensured with their new stable home and school situation. As for me, well, I'm a bit numb to this whole thing. So much has happened since my family was first torn apart 9 years ago that nothing surprises or "gets me going." You aren't my therapist, though, so I'll stop here.

Additionally, this Saturday, October 2nd, is my birthday. Is it just me, or do birthday's get less and less exciting with each passing year? I can remember the joy and excitement that filled me during my birthday as a kid. What ever happened to that feeling? I remember parties, with tons of friends. The present-day situation just doesn't compare...

Lastly, the psuedo-debate between the two major presidential candidates took place this evening. I call it a psuedo-debate because its run by a group called the Commission of Presidential Debates who violates several IRS and FEC regulations. See, they exclude third parties and impose rules that turn a "debate" into nothing more than a joint press conference. I really can't believe that Bush is ahead in "the polls," considering the material that the other bum Kerry has to work with! Even a well trained monkey could beat George Bush with the things he's done in the past four years. I'll be holding my copy of the U.S. Constitution, or what's left of it, tight tonight while those traitors sleep weel in Washington.


:. Sunday, September 26, 2004 at 05:39:38 PM EST

Another hurricane has passed through the state of Florida, this time by the name of Jeanne. My area was very lucky this time around. Neighborhoods not more than 5 minutes away from us have no electricity, where as we only lost power spiratically for minutes at a time. As a result of the storm, there's no school Monday, so overall I'd say Jeanne was a fun experience. The wind howling last night was really music to my ears.

In other news, the antibiotics that I was given out of the hospital have caused my scalp to break out in hives. Attractive, I know... To counter the hives I'm taking benadryl, which knocks me the hell out. When oh when will I be better?

Lastly, an update on my TV-computer thing is in order. Two posts ago I wrote about what I wanted to do with my computer and TV. I'm almost there. What I've got right now is one display on my monitor and another on my TV, allowing me to run applications and watch video on each, not affecting the other. I had to buy quite a few extensions and adapters, most of which haven't come in the mail yet. As of right now, I've got a video but no audio running to my TV. I'm able to use the computer speakers for now, but when the audio cables come, sound will come from the TV's speakers. The last thing I'm waiting for is the USB extension cable that will allow me to use my computer's game pad from my bed. Ah, comfort :) I can't wait until everything to be setup.

Anyway, now you can come to the site and now be greeted with that disturbing hospital photo of mine. See, I do care about you all...

Update: For all of you who treat this site like a reliable news source, I have some good news for you. School has been cancelled for Tuesday in Palm Beach County. You may resume your normal out-of-school activities :)


:. Thursday, September 23, 2004 at 02:51:49 PM EST

Thursday night, my rogue, infected tonsil nearly swole up to the size of a golf ball. My throat was almost entirely blocked off from everything needing to get down it, including air. I've never felt more pain or had such a hard time living each second to the next than at that time. I was really afraid. Eventually, I was admitted into the ER where I was given a good dosage of morphine and those body-loving antibiotics.

As all loyal readers of this waste of cyber-space know, I've been dealing with these damn tonsil issues for a month or so now, so it has been decided that on the 14th of October I will undergo what is known as "triple bypass heart surgery" ... just kidding, I'm getting a tonsillectomy, woo! I've already had my tonsils lanced twice before, once at the hospital yesterday morning, so getting my tonsils taken out all together will be small change when compared. For those of you who don't know, tonsil lancing involves a doctor numbing your throat (very harshly, if I may add) with this horrid spray and several needles. Once you're numb (and bleeding), the doctor uses a scalpel and scissors to cut open and drain the abscess caused by the infected tonsils. So, one can see that this is a very, very painful procedure. I survived, though. After all of that painful stuff was out of the way, I had to get a few x-rays and CAT scans taken to make sure that there weren't any infections lurking in some deep region of my throat. Those are fun, aside from that glow you let off for the few following days because of the radiation ;)

Anyway, I'm home and feeling alright now, plus my throat is feeling better than it has for a long while.

The funny thing about all of this is that as soon as my tonsils return to a normal state, they have to be removed, causing me more pain... so, do I look forward to getting better, or don't I?

Oh, and for all of your personal entertainment, my mother took a picture of my half-dead, morphiniphied self in my automatic hospital bed with television remote control.



Rock on Derek, rock on!


:. Saturday, September 18, 2004 at 11:41:55 PM EST

Perhaps it was the awfully strong pain killers the doctor has me on, or maybe it was the boredom eating away at what brain cells remain in my head, but this afternoon, a great idea came to me. The video card I purchased a while ago has S-Video out, allowing me to display the contents of my computer monitor on my television. Cool, ah? Well, this is great and all, but what if I want to use my computer while a friend wants to play an SNES rom or even a Playstation game using the ePSXE emulator on the TV? What if they want to watch a movie on the TV? Well, a system capable of doing all of that is what I plan to setup.


As you can see, I will be unaffected by my lazy friend's video game habbits. I can use my lovely Linux desktop as I normaly would while he tries his luck in a suicidal game of Zombies Ate My Neighbors using ZSNES, the world's best SNES emulator :)

Anyway, as you can see this is a pretty badass setup. The only thing standing in my way are the technicalities of getting it to work. I'm already half way there, so when I finish, I'll write a how-to in the newly added Projects section and a post sharing my success with you, the loyal reader.

In the mean time, wish me luck!


:. Friday, September 17, 2004 at 08:05:46 PM EST

Today, I did not attend school due to, once again, my tonsils. This time, the doctors have given me four different drugs and say that I have to have my tonsils taken out as soon as I feel better. I really don't look forward to this for two reasons, one being the pain and another the days of school I'll miss. I was already absent for four days about three weeks ago and can't really afford to miss anymore. I plan to miss a Thursday and Friday at school, since I've been told I'll bounce back in four days, meaning I'll be good to go back to school that following Monday.

I complain, yes I complain, but thats soon over, as this procedure will stop my tonsils from absorbing bacteria and making my throat feel like hell. Feel free to send me get well cards :|


:. Wednesday, September 15, 2004 at 09:34:15 PM EST

The previously posted projected path for Hurricane Ivan is, at this point, quite outdated. Follow that link to updated information on the storm's location.

I'm glad that my area won't be subject to Ivan's rage, however, I can't help but feel guilty by feeling so. It is estimated that 50,000 people will die in Louisiana as a result of the hurricane. I mean, 50,000, Christ! The city of New Orleans is largely below sea level, so the predicted 6 to 8 feet of rain will only worsen the situation.

If you've been wondering about the sudden outbreak of hurricanes this year, then you'll be interested in this bit of information: Every 40 years or so, storms, such as the ones being seen now, destroy everything in their path as part of some sort of weather cycle. That settles that whole "end of the world" scenario I've been hearing lately.

Anyway, tomorrow we have school off thanks to Roshashana. Its funny; we return to school for only tow days and already have a holiday. Half of the student population won't be returning Friday, either, since they're still "celebrating their religious holiday." The important thing is that this results in a somewhat stress-free day for the infildels roaming the halls of my prestigious learning facility.


:. Saturday, September 11, 2004 at 02:22:39 PM EST

Over a week later, electricity, my DSL line and I have returned...

During the hurricane, most stayed home, however, my dad felt it would be a good idea to go to my aunt's condo in Naples. My sister, my dad, my dad's girlfriend and her three children and I lived together in that tiny condo for an entire week. Originally, our plan was to leave last Saturday, however, that somehow got erased and we didn't return until this past Wednesday. My dad didn't want to head back to a home with no electricicty and air conditioning, which I don't blame him for.

While Naples was mostly a drag, I did have some bits of fun. I saw Without a Paddle, which was surprisingly funny, and Hero, which was great, though it was no Crouching Tiger. The funny thing is, Hero was released in China in 2001 and the US is just now getting a release. Aside from seeing movies, we also ate a really badass Japanese restaurant called Fujiyama... man was that good.

When we finally left Naples to come back home, we were surprised at all of the trees that were uprooted. The next this that we noticed was how terrible the house smelled. See, everything in the fridge rotted as a result of the week long power outage. Our original plan was to take the boards off the windows and whatnot, but we're waiting to see what happens with this new bastard of a hurricane...



I'm located just below the words "TUE 2AM," so things are still unsure.

Well, school starts Wednesday, so I guess I should finish my homework. Did you know that we've been out of school for a week and two days now down here? This coming Monday and Tuesday will make it a week and four days. Strangely enough, there's a Jewish holiday this coming Thursday, so our first week back to school will be quite inconsequential.

Update: School actually starts Tuesday, for all of my peers. If things change, you can find out from a more reliable source, The Palm Beach Post.


:. Wednesday, September 01, 2004 at 04:07:35 PM EST

Those of you who live in the not-so-great state of Florida are well aware of Hurricane Frances. The rest of you need not worry about this potential disaster that is a category four hurricane. Tomorrow, my school day will be reduced to a half day and Friday school has been cancelled, allowing us to board up and either evacuate or find shelter. Below is the hurricane'e project path with my location labeled.



As you can see, I'm pretty "fucked." The latest news says that my area will only recieve the tail end of the storm, however, their information isn't very reliable, as they've changed their predictions as to where Frances will hit nearly twice a day all week. I'm heading to my cousin's condo in Naples tomorrow night, regardless of the projected path.

In other news, we had what I call a "reverse half day" at school today. See, the usual half day starts at the usual time, but ends at 11:45 AM rather than 2:30 PM. Today, though, school started at 10:30 AM and ended at the usual time (2:30 PM). I planned to wake up at 9 AM or so, but my internal clock just wouldn't have it. I had about two hours to get ready this morning, so I entertained myself with the Unreal Tournament 2004 Linux Demo. The real fun didn't start until I got to school, though. My first class of the day is Computer Programming II Honors. Yes, honors, fear. We're "taught" Java in this class. I put taught in quotes because our teacher is hardly a teacher. Rather, she is a fascist dictator. Daily, students are given detentions and referals for infractions as mere as getting out of their seet to ask a classmate about the lesson, since they're not finding much help from the teacher. Last year, I accidently sent a net send to every public computer in my county stating, "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto," so ever since she, the teacher, has hated me.

Today, she told the class that there were students cought using the DOS prompt in class, and that they were going to recieve severe punishment. Now, my voice is in horrible condition currently due to my tonsils, however, I just couldn't let this one pass. I raised my hand and attempted to explain that the DOS prompt was all that Microsoft users used until Windows 3.1 was released. Then I continued, saying that the DOS prompt is just another way to run programs, execute commands and manage files. She was quite upset by my factual statements and barked back in her usual, uneducated fashion that I was wrong. See, she doesn't understand concepts such as the ones I mentioned, so she said that we are to use CodeWarrior, our Java IDE, to run programs. Well, yes, such is true if one is trying to run a Java program they've just written, though I doubt our IDE would be of much use when wanting to move files around or open other applications. I tried to explain this to her, but still, she refused to believe it was true. Then, she accused me of never even using a text-based operating system. This is when I got really upset, as I do all of my file management on a fucking command prompt, not to mention at least half of the applications I run are text-based.

I've never accused her of anything in an attempt to make her look stupid, since its not necessary, she does a fine job of that by simply opening her mouth. Toward the end of the class period, she read off a list of names of people who didn't turn in their internet permission slip. My name was on that list, since I was absent while she checked them. She thought she had me by the balls when she read off my name and threatened to give me a referal if I used the internet without permission. In reality, it was me who was doing the ball having. I immediately retrieved my permission slip from my binder and presented it to her. She was upset, and boy did it feel great.

The rest of the class period consisted of me wondering why the school blocked my domain, backdrifts.net. The filter page states that my site has been blocked by request. I have a feeling it has something to do with the CGI proxy script I've been using from school that I installed on my web server. None of this really matters, since I can still access my site at school through my IP address... those fools.


:. Sunday, August 29, 2004 at 11:55:29 PM EST

Those of you who own a Gmail have likely asked yourself, "just what do I do with this 1 GB of storage!?" Well, believe it or not, if you're running Linux, you can mount your 1 GB of cyberspace anywhere you please! That's right, this discovery was made by someone by the name of Richard Jones. He has a how-to here

Overall this is a pretty neat discovery. One can do many things with Gmail these days, including using it as a POP, SMTP or FTP server! I wouldn't exactly say that I've added an extra gig in storage to my machine tonight, but its cool none the less.


:. Wednesday, August 25, 2004 at 10:00:55 PM EST

Today, my cousins from New York came to visit. I always have great laughs with them. There's something unique about family that brings us together no matter how different we may be. We all change year after year, but somehow when we come together, it doesn't matter.

I'd like to avoid sounding like a philosopher, but I have to ask, why do we spend our lives surrounded by people and things that we could care less for? I want to be with those I love and care about all the time. The time I did spend with them will seem like a blur when I'm lying on my death bed holding my son's hand, smiling and thanking him. If only there was more time... if only...


:. Friday, August 20, 2004 at 04:44:14 PM EST

Sometime in the future, I plan to collect every picture in my house of either me, my friends or my family and scan them all so that I can have them in one big, convenient album. A few days ago I found a few old pictures of me with my sisters, which I thought were funny to look at. Until the day comes where I get out of this chair and create that giant album, perhaps you'll find some enjoyment in these.


:. Tuesday, August 17, 2004 at 04:11:04 PM EST

Today is a day full of joy! Today is also a day of pain and anguish. Let me explain...

What's great about today is that Bellsouth finally came out to my house and fixed my ADSL line! I now download at 450 kilobytes a second or more. My upload speed always worked as advertised, a mere 45 kilobytes a second. This calls for a big hooray... HOORAY!

In other, more upsetting news, my sinus infection has evolved into something out of this world. I went to the doctor again today, missing school, because my glands were still painfully swolen, making even swallowing hurt like hell. I've been on some damn strong antibiotics, so the doctors were very surprised at by my worsening condition. After poking and prying at me for a few minutes, they concluded that I'd have to have my tonsils removed, because they were collecting too much bacteria. "Great," I thought. The doctors then told me that they were going to send me to a throat specialist. Not more than an hour later I was sitting on the specialist's patient chair. He concluded that I didn't need to have my tonsils removed just yet, as that wasn't for sure the cause of the problem. He brought in a few tools and told me that he was going to break open, then drain a "bubble," if you will, that was full of puss in the back of my throat. I started to imagine what the process would be like, and frankly, I got pretty scared. The doctor first sprayed some numbing solution into my mouth. It tasted a lot like that mist that comes out of asthma inhalers, except this one was in a much larger dose. I nearly threw up it tasted so horrible. After the spray started to kick in, he got his needle ready. The needle was twice the size of those used to give kids their vaccination shots. This needle went into the roof of my mouth. You can imagine my pain, even with the numbing spray. The purpose of this shot, I found out, was to further numb me. "How much is this going to hurt!?" I asked. "Not at all," he answered in an all too calm voice. The doc's next move was to cut open the "bubble" with a pair of scissors and then remove it completely with a scalpel. At this point, my mouth, numb as could be, was the host to a stew of saliva and blood. My inability to control my mouth muscles caused it all to drip down my lips into the bowl they had on my lap. Not a pretty scene, at all. Once the wound on the roof of my mouth was large enough, the doctor drained and collected the puss with another needle. Just a few minutes prior I was in the car listening to the Magical Mystery Tour, and now I'm holding onto my dad's hand for dear life as some guy probes my throat with a fucking chisel! After it was all said and done, I didn't feel all that bad, just very weird, as I still couldn't control my mouth muscles. It wasn't until I got home and the numbing medicine wore off that the real pain came. I've never felt anything as bad as this. As I write this I'm still in extreme pain, though this numbing spray I got from the drug store is helping a lot. If I so much as swallow I'll start crying, so it looks like I'm going for the rest of the day without food or drink. As of right now I've got a disgusting, bleeding cut on the roof of my mouth, visible if I say "ah" and look into the mirror. Hopefully that heals up soon. If I remember correctly, the mouth is one of the fastest healing parts of your body. I'm supposed to be back in school Friday, but you never know. Then again, I wa supposed to be over this sinus infection days ago.

All in all, today isn't too bad. Yay for high speed internet! Oh, and just a little side note, my illness is due entirely to the lake in Jeff's backyard. That lake should be drained immediately.


:. Saturday, August 14, 2004 at 12:47:27 PM EST

I switched from Adelphia Powerlink cable internet to Bellsouth FastAccess DSL internet about three months ago. Soon after getting the modem setup properly, I left for my summer trip to Pennsylvania and New York for The Fifth HOPE. The first thing I noticed before I left is that my connection speed was pittiful, as I was only downloading at 50 kilobytes/sec, and uploading at around 40. FastAccess Extreme was advertised to have speeds of 375 kilobytes/sec down and 48 kilobytes/sec up. I'm not too worried about the lack of upload speed, thats you, the site visitor's problem. What drove me to stay on the line with Bellsouth for nearly two hours this morning was my download speed, or lack there of. I used to enjoy speeds up to 400 kilobytes/sec down on Adelphia Powerlink, however, they didn't offer me a static IP. On top of that, their service was as unreliable as could be. If it so much as rained my cable connection would drop.

For some time now, I've wondered why in the world my DSL connection is lagging the way it is. In the past, I was told that my home was too far away from the call center. This morning, it was first noticed by the technition that I was on the phone with that there was excess noise on my phone line. After many tests, he found that my lines were actually very clean, however, my home was on the edge of the boundary for locations that qualify for DSL. I feel that it is bad business to sell someone a service knowing that it will not perform as advertised. There are a few possible solutions to my problem, which will all be looked into when the technition comes to the house Tuesday. I was told its possible to "connect me to a remote terminal" to fix the speed issue, but we'll just have to see. If no solution exists, I'll simply ask for a reduction on my bill and live with the speeds I've got until I move out someday. In the mean time, all I can do it pray to every invisible man that I know for a solution to my DSl dilema.

If you know of any good broadband providers in south Florida, leave a comment letting me know. One thing no one should be without is a damn good connection to the net.


:. Wednesday, August 11, 2004 at 07:23:08 PM EST

If I had a dollar for everytime I heard that today... So my Junior year has officially set sail in the dangerous waters that my school is comprised of.

The new year started with all of the expected scares and intimidating rules and regulations laid out, however, something new cought my ear. It appears a new excuse as to why students cannot have cell phones on campus has been crafted. When the problem first arose years ago, schools were saying that only drug dealers use cell phones, and as a result they were not allowed at school. After that stereotype died down and the practical use for cell phones was greater understood, the faculty just told people that phones going off in class was rude. This what straight and to the point, quite unlike their usual behaviour. Sadly, people tend to be inconsiderate and not care who they interrupt with their loud, annoying 8-bit rendition of their favorite talentless "artist's" new song. Perhaps that is why this year they're using terrorism as a reason why we should keep the phones at home...

Of course, everyone is the classroom bought into the teacher's explanation of how a phone and a bomb on "the same frequency" could cause the next world war. They love it when their audience is uneducated on the subject, that's how their scare tactics work. That teacher lead those students to believe that by powering on an unmodified cell phone, one is capable of accidently detonating a bomb planted by a dangerous terrorist. In reality, (cell) phone bombs do not work like this at all. While cell phones can be used to set bombs off, usually one cannot unknowingly do so. The only case in which this would be possible is if one's cell phone was stolen, modified by the thief planning the attack and then returned to the owner so that when he powered it on, the bomb would detonate. One more commom method practiced to use cell phones as a detonator is to build a cell reciever into a bomb, meaning all that would need to be done to set it off would be to call the reciever's number. Its unlikely that student Joe Shmo's is calling a friend with the same phone number as the detonator. To suggest this as an actual threat horrifies me. How low will these schools go to keep their students in their control? We should not let terrorism change our lives, we should continue living as we did pre-9/11, just ask our leaders! I almost forgot, we have a say-one-thing-do-another administration. The holes in their logic are fun to run through. None of it all makes sense. Its just plain stupid.

Other ridiculous reasons we were given as to why cell phones were Satan's playtoy included a picture phone's ability to take pictures. One could take pictures of a test, they claim. I'm not sure how familiar readers of this post are with the quality of picture phone images, but take my word for it, it would be impossible to take one photo of each page of the test that looked clear enough to read. I guess a student could try taking many smaller pictures of the test, but by then I'd hope a teacher would catch him. If not, then something is wrong with that teacher, which is why I only shook my head when the one in charge of my sociology class suggested that its hard to tell exactly what a student is doing when a cell phone is open in the position it needs to be in order to take pictures. Christ I hope he wasn't serious...

So, this is the bullshit I put up with. My school is not a horrible place to learn out of a text book, but I tell you, they're breeding sheep there.


:. Tuesday, August 10, 2004 at 08:57:10 PM EST

Wednesday starts the first day of my Junior year in High School. Just like every last day of summer I've experienced since I started school, I'm spending this one feeling sick. I'm nearly over my sinus infection, that's not what I meant. If you've ever been subjected to school, then you know what I'm trying to say. My stomach is swirling, my head is spinning and the fears are building. I keep telling myself that this year will be a good year, which I believe is true in some ways, though one can never be entirely sure, can they? Of course they can't. I feel confident, for a lack of better terms, in myself as I did when I was a little kid. As a kid, I wouldn't worry about appearance or if I attracted the opposite sex. Thanks to my mother who deserves more than fate will ever deal her, I have instinct to show compassion to everyone I come across, but to hell with people who want me to be something I'm not. Like me for me, or even love me for me, and for God's sake hate me for me. For a while now, and forever, I hope, I am me.

I'm also going to bring lunch to school this year. Taking the time in the morning is a small price to pay for having the luxury of not collapsing towards the end of the day as I did last year. One may think that this is no big deal, but sometimes its the seemingly little things that make all of the difference in the world.

Aside from starting things anew, lessons tought and experience gained have made me a better person. I know more of the what I should gravitate towards, and I know more of what I should avoid. One never stops learning, and one never stops experiencing, so perhaps all of my hopes for a paninless year are destined to turn into laughs somewhere down the line. Then again...


:. Monday, August 09, 2004 at 07:34:58 PM EST

That one word very accurately describes how I've been feeling the past three days. As I briefly mentioned in the last post, I took a trip up to Jeff's lake house for a few days. Until you read this post in its entirety, my opening words will greatly confuse you.

So, Monday I headed up to Lake Weire or wherever it is that he's moved to, which sucks, by the way. Why do such good friends have to leave, anyway? Until I have an answer to that question, I'll keep writing about the trip. Our method of transportation was an RV. Jeff's family has a pretty nice RV, with TVs, a refridgerator, beds and even windows in the back where we saw some woman giving some guy road head. For those of you who don't know what road head is, its when the front passenger (usually a female) of the automobile in question gives head to the driver (usually a male) of that same automobile. Jeff and I started pointing and laughing at them and they soon noticed. Boy was that funny. A few episodes of Futurama later, we arrived at our destination. This is the part where we both slept for a very, very long time.

The next day we had a blast. He has a huge house, first of all, and a huge lake right in his backyard. These kept me pretty occupied while I was up there. One thing we did was took his Seadoo out for ride, after ride, after ride. I got pretty damn nauseous on that Seadoo, thanks to Jeff's driving. I tried taking a picture of us on the Seadoo going fast with wakes behind us by holding up my camera, although I won't know how it turned out until I get my pictures back, at which time a new album will be added in the pictures section.

For you land lovers, you'll be happy to know that we also rode around on his Golf Cart, which, again, made me nauseous. And not to sound like a broken record, but that was also thanks to Jeff's driving. I got a bunch of cool pictures of us doing that, too.

Finaly, it was time to leave. The RV ride home was supposed to be a smooth, luxurious one where we'd drink the finest wine, feast on the most delicious foods and have sex with the most beautiful girls... minus the wine, food and sex. Either way, the ride home was a disaster. At around 11 PM, the RV's fanbelt broke. Hours passed before it was repaired, and even then it was just a temporary fix until the proper parts could be ordered. I was half asleep during this whole ordeal, as I could feel a fever coming on. At first I disregarded it, thinking it was simply the lack of air conditioning in the RV... was I ever wrong. For some reason, we decided to sleep in the AC deprived RC for three hours before finally getting a hotel room at the Holiday Inn we were ironically parked right next to. While walking to our room, I threw up part of the fish filet I ate earler. Let it be known that I will never again eat a fish filet, ever. Once in the hotel room, the blasting AC started to make me feel a whole lot better. The guy at the front desk found out I was sick and actually ran to his car to give me some pain killers for my throbbing headache. Finally I could sleep.

Around noon the next day we resumed our journey home, well, to my home, at least. At this point, my fever had evoloved into swolen glands and dizziness. The next morning my dad and I headed to the doctor's office to find out that I had a sinus infection. The doctor says I got it from Jeff's lake, which is why I hate that fucking lake and why I feel like shit. My glands are the size of tennis balls, so it really hurts to swallow. Since the day I got home, I've only had a bowl of soup, apple sauce and glasses of water and juice to down my medicine. The worst part about all of this is that I have school Wednesday and it is now Monday night. It will take a miracle, no doubt, for me to feel better for my first day of school.

Anyway, thats why I feel like shit. To those of you still reading, I am greatly sorry for all of the whining and complaining that I've just put you through. However, I'm not entirely sorry, I mean, I really do feel awful. In fact, I've never felt worse in my entire life. At least with illnesses I've had in the past I could swallow food. Three days without more than soup and apple sauce isn't good for anyone. I sure do hope this post makes sense, I am, after all, really, really out of it. Pictures from the trip will be online when I get my pictures developed, like I said, so you can look forward to be before this sickness raped my insides. With that, I am off...


:. Monday, August 02, 2004 at 08:14:12 PM EST

So I was taking a little nap on my bed when suddenly my sister bursts in to tell me that I got a package in the mail. This package could have either been my Slackware T-Shirt or the nVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 I ordered. To my enjoyment, it was the video card. I quickly installed it, though the weird dimensions of my case forced me to do some wiggling to get the card to fit. After the hardware installation came the software installation. I booted my machine and ran the latest nVIDIA Linux driver installer. If you're for some reason interested in the installer, you can find it here. Anyway, I got a warning message just before the modules compiled about conflicts I may encounter with the nVIDIA drivers because I have the rivafb module loaded. Well, I looked at the source I built my kernel from and found that I had rivafb selected as a module and not built-in. Then, after some searching, I found out that the rivafb module was never even built. So, I guess that problem is solved, heh.

Now that I've got this card, I can finally install and run Unreal Tournament 2004, woo! I can also run a cable from my video card to my TV. I tried it out earlier today and sadly my TV can only put out a maximum resolution of 800x600. Perhaps a better TV would do the trick... no matter, I don't plan on using the TV-out feature.

In the mean time, perhaps someone who reads these posts can fill me on a tool that works under Linux that will allow me to see what speed my card is running at, and possible a tool to overclock it. Please don't suggest NVClock , as it doesn't support GeForce cards. This being, I cannot trust it when it tells me that my new card's memory speed is 85 MHz and its core speed is 58 MHz. Thats impossible, my 32 MB nVIDIA Riva TNT2 ran at 125 and 125 MHz. If I'm able to overclock my card I'm very happy, if I'm at least able to see what speed its running at, I'm mildly happy.

I hope I entertained you all. Excuse me, Jeff is going to be here in 15 minutes, and I still have to pack. Where are we going? His lake house. Cool, ah? Boats, water, sun, housing and probably even food!

Update: In response to "my daddy's" comment, my glxgears output is "6356 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1271.200 FPS."


:. Saturday, July 31, 2004 at 12:52:41 PM EST

A few days ago I bought the nVIDIA GeForce FX 5600. I figured my TNT2 with 32 MB of RAM just wasn't cutting it. After all, I'm planning on installing Unreal Tournament 2004 upon its arrival to my mailbox. Thanks to this awesome guide, I should have that game running flawlessly. Wish me luck with all that...

In other news, I saw Manchurian Candidate last night with Alex. It was a good movie, I think. I'll probably have to see it again to fully understand it.

I guess that's all...


:. Wednesday, July 28, 2004 at 11:40:58 AM EST

The products of pure boredeom and insomnia are sometimes pretty cool, as proved with last night's incident.

Jeff and I were sitting in my room on my computers, as usual, talking about near nothing while eating microwaved food that will probably end up killing us in 15 years, when suddenly an idea came to me. Woudln't it be sort of cool to have my site display the song I'm currently listening to using XMMS, my mp3 player application? Maybe it won't be, but the technical challenge was there none the less. This site is hosted on one machine, and my mp3s and their player is on another. At first, I was using a small frame to display the output of a script that was run on the workstation (the one with mp3s) end, however the frames refused to work. After much more trying, I decided to take the easy way out and add a job to cron to run a script every minute which checks my current song in XMMS and sends it to my server. The result of this is that nifty output at the bottom of the site. Confused? Scroll down to the very bottom, until there is no more bottom left to scroll down to. If you still don't see anything, its possible my workstation where I listen to mp3s is not powered on, which this site's script will recognzie and not displaying anything at all.

In addition to just being able to see what song I'm listening to, you also have the ability to download it from me by clicking the track title. You will be prompted with a username and password field. Steal my pants and call me Lucy if I tell you. Well, if you're nice enough, perhaps...

Update: I decided to put the current song display right below the menu on the top right, that way its more visible.


:. Sunday, July 25, 2004 at 04:03:26 PM EST

I'm thinking of throwing a little LAN game at my house sometime soon. If you live near me (you know who you are) and like playing computer games from time to time, your presence would be enjoyed. I know that Jeff and Phil would go, but I don't know what games we'd play. I have Quake III Arena, the original version of Unreal Tournament and Warcraft III installed on my workstation. I run Linux, so I have to use WineX. These are all, in my opinion, great games for a LAN party. Sadly, I haven't got that great of a video card, so playing games that demand much of my hardware is sort of out of the question. If you want to participate, send me an email at ate4m@bellsouth.net or leave a comment on this post.


:. Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at 02:07:38 AM EST

The summer started off worse than I could ever imagine, but I guess things could only go up from there...

Sorry for the recent downtime. My dad is getting his bedroom redone, and as a result our electricity was pulled for quite a while. No worries, I'm going to buy an UPS.

More importantly, I survived (for the most part) The Fifth HOPE. RedHackt and I were in charge of the movie room, and thanks to other voulenteers like Evan and RiscTaker, we managed to actually sleep for a few hours. The movie room ran like a charm. Ethan setup a great video system that used Netcat to stream video from the panel rooms, as there was quite an overflow of people, down to us in that dark, curtained off projector-powered entertainment haven. Additionally, he included a few hard-coded films, such as Revolution OS and Freedom Downtime in his setup that we could play upon request. I'd like to mention that if you saw a film or clip in the movie room you are interested in, feel free to contact me for more information regarding it.

Most who attended the conference, I believe, would agree that if there was one thing they missed during those three days, it was sleep. Allow me to walk you through my sleep cycle from the day I arrived in the city, to Monday, the day I left (only to return the next day for food and whatnot)...

Wednesday - slept from 4:30 am to around 9:00 am the next morning (Thursday)
Thursday - setup day, no sleep at all
Friday - noon until 2:00 pm
Saturday - noon until 2:00 pm
Sunday - 9:00 am until noon
Monday - 10:00 am until 4:00 pm

During the actual conference days, I got a total of 6 hours of sleep. There is an easy way to tell if you truley need sleep. First, take a short nap. If you cannot recall a single dream, then you were extremely knocked out and definetly need more sleep. I didn't start dreaming again until Tuesday. Then again, I may be wrong, after all, I was asleep.

Many things hapenned that weekend other than shifts in the movie room at hours one could not fathom being up at. Speakers spoke, the NOC team networked, the lock pickers picked locks and the social engineers socially engineered.

On top of all that, I met tons of amazing people from all over the world; Germany, Holland, Denmark, Ohio... Yes I know, Ohio isn't a foreign country, but it might as well be. Who am I to talk, I love in Florida for God's sake, which reminds me, I ranted all about Florida on Last Tuesday's Off The Wall. Radio sure is fun.

As always, I took plenty of pictures during my trip, though they won't be up in the picture section until I get my Picture CDs made. Ordinarily I would just copy my photos from the digital camera over to my machine. Yes, ordinarily I would, though my sister decided she wanted to bring my camera to school a few months back without asking me and ended up getting it broken. Thank you sister, thank you. I'll add an update to this post as soon as the pictures are online. In the mean time, I found myself in many other pictures through The Fifth HOPE Picture Archives which are already in The Fifth HOPE gallery.

After the festivities ended at the hotel, clean up time came, of course. As expected, cleaning up was much easier than setting up. Thank [insert your favorite invisible man here; e.g. God].

I eventually left the city and returned to my family on Wednesday, three days after the conference ended... sniffle... Life here doesn't even compare to life in New York. Florida is a wasteland. Oh, won't you come and waste away with me?

Finally, a special thanks to all of those who housed/put up with me during my stay in the city that never sleeps.

Goodnight :)

Update: Pennsylvania 2004 and The Fifth HOPE 2004 pictures now online!


:. Wednesday, July 07, 2004 at 05:10:36 PM EST

I'm here in RedHackt's clean (yeah right) dorm room. I love these dual 17" lcds... I really do.

Anyway, we're waiting for Emmanuel, and then RedHackt and I are taking the train to the hotel.

Later.


:. Tuesday, July 06, 2004 at 11:18:45 PM EST

After a three hour drive from Altoona, PA to the Harrisburgh airport to meet my dad, followed by a two and ad half hour drive from the airport, I have finally arrived in Staten Island, NY. Staten Island, NY... not much here, except for the world's largest landfill. In fact, its the only one visible from space.

Tomorrow, though, I'm heading into Manhattan for Off The Hook. Then, then my friend... then I go to The Hotel Pennsylvania to start setting up for HOPE. That will also consume my Thursday, which will eventually fade into Friday marking the beginning the conference.

I'm sure I'll have access to a machine during the conference, so expect at least one update. In the mean time, stay happy, healthy and above all safe.


:. Monday, July 05, 2004 at 04:53:48 PM EST

Today my sister and I went to DelGrosso, the local Altoona, Pennsylvania amusement park. The park has both a water section and a rides section. We stuck with the water, since the only good ride, The Crazy Mouse, was closed for matinence. The water park has a few different types of slides, including two identical single rider slides, a completely enclosed double/single slide, a slide that "defies gravity," although it doesn't and finally a very wide and fun slide right in the middle of all of them. We had a good time.

In a few minutes I'm heading to the mall to buy a pair of shoes, since I forgot mine at home. Quite dumb of me, quite dumb indeed.

Tomorrow is in fact my last day in the state of Pennsylvania. Tomorrow, I'm going to spend some time at my cousin's house, and then meet my dad at the airport to drive to New York. New York! WOOOO! HOPE! The Big Apple is going to rock.

I almost forgot, you can expect some possibly great pictures when I finally get home. They're going to look somewhat bad, though, since I'm going to be getting picture CDs made from two disposable cameras. I have found that picture CDs don't quite live up to traditional digital camera images. "But Derek, don't you have a digital camera?" you may be asking. My answer, "yes, yes I did." Among things I am without on my trip is my digital camera. Not because I forgot it, though, but because my sister took it to school without asking me and ended up getting it broken. Thanks, Kylee, thanks... sigh.


:. Sunday, July 04, 2004 at 07:29:44 PM EST

Happy 4th of July.

You know, I wrote a big, well thought out post a minute ago. That post was lost into the depths of cyber space, thanks to the browser on the computer I'm using here in PA crashing.

All I have left to say at this point, angered and sad, is that we need to take this country fucking back.


:. Friday, July 02, 2004 at 08:39:57 AM EST

Yesterday I had a ton of free time on my hands and felt I could best spend it improving the way my loyal readers look at my pictures. If you go to the pictures section of the site, you will now notice that the photo albums, such as Christmas 2003 are thumbnailed and laid out nice and evenly. If you click a thumbnail it expands to its full size, of course.

Tell me how you like it :)


:. Thursday, July 01, 2004 at 11:32:09 AM EST

It's day two in "The PA," and things are going good, with the exception of the expected physical labor assigned to my sister and I from our insane grandfather.

Two nights ago, me, my sister and our friend Nancy who lives up here went to see the Spiderman 2 premiere. I really liked the movie, though I think it has something to do with the fact that Mary Jane was played by Kirsten Dunst :) I know, I'm weird. Either way, I suggest you check out the movie.

Last night, Nancy, my sister and I went to State College to visit everyone's favorite 50's diner, Baby's. They have amazing veggie burders and milkshakes there. They've also got these cool jukebox song selectors at each table. We put in four dollars or so and in return got to choose 20 songs off the list. We split up the selection, and of course I used all of mine on The Beatles. After getting fat at the diner we drove to Barnes & Noble. I always love going to book stores. Finally, we went to a music store named Mike's Music and Movies. They had CDs, as expected, heh. They had this CD, which I really wanted, however I must save my money for NY.

Well, those have been my past two days. Reading back on what I just wrote has made me realized how boring my writing is.


:. Tuesday, June 29, 2004 at 03:55:18 PM EST

Well, I'm here in Altoona, PA!

We left this morning at 6:45 AM in a limo (oh la la) and headed for the airport. We first flew to Atlanta, where we then cought another flight to Pittsburgh. Once we got off of our final flight, a two hour car ride awaited us to where I am writing you from now.

The plain rides were generally good, with the exception of some mild tubulance. I watched The Simpsons and Futurama on my Gameboy Advance SP during the first flight, and listened to music and slept during the second. "How, Derek, how did you watch those ever-so-hilarious television shows on your GBASP?" you ask. My answer is with this tricky little device. It really is amazing.

Its time to catch up with my relatives.


:. Monday, June 28, 2004 at 08:38:37 PM EST

Eh... more or less. Actually, my dad is getting his bedroom and bathroom redone, resulting in some rewiring and temporary power outages at my home. Since I'm poor, I've never invested in a battery backup for my server and ADSL modem, meaning that while they rewire, backdrifts.net unwires. Oh, clever :) The IP address of the server may also change due to this, possibly causing all of your requests to this site to go to some other machine on my network. My dad will be home for another week (while I'm in PA), so I'll be able to call him and have him configure what is needed if this occurs. However, once he leaves for PA to pick my sister and I up for our two week stay in NY, there is no telling what will happen. Hopefully nothing will so I can get to my machine from HOPE.


:. Sunday, June 27, 2004 at 09:22:12 PM EST

There are certain things I find to be very important. One of these is the past. When I redid this site for the millionth and hopefully last time, I did not bother porting my old posts over to work with the new layout and backend. I feel part of me was lost in that, for some reason. Laugh, but that's how I feel. As a result, I put in a backup CD that I made a while ago and did the next best thing to bringing the old posts to the new site, and put them up here. It was nice reading them, remember things past. I hope someone out there gets half as much joy out of my decision as I did.

Also, there may be several dead links or images in the archive. Some things just don't last forever. I apologize.


:. Sunday, June 27, 2004 at 03:04:50 PM EST

I wasn't sure if people knew that I'm leaving for three weeks on Tuesday morning. Where, you ask? Well, first, Pennsylvania to visit my mom's side of the family. After a week in good old Altoona, PA, I'll be driving with my dad and sister to New York. I really do love New York. This trip to the Big Apple will be the best yet because I'm going to HOPE. "HOPE? Is that some sort of clever acronym?" you may be asking. You probably aren't, but in the event that you are, the answer is yes. It stands for Hackers On Planet Earth. Does it sound geeky? Well, that's because it is. After two weeks in NY I will fly home. I hope I don't find another TSA Notification of Baggage Inspection cards in my suitcase again. During my trip to PA this last winter, I had to undergo extensive security checks because I didn't have a photo ID. The security at the airport concluded that I am not a terrorist, which was a big relief to me, I wasn't sure.

Anyway, I'll have access to the mess known as the internet while away, so I can make all sorts of useless posts regarding my trip. Aren't you looking forward to that?

I almost forgot, I changed a post's subject line is shown. I suppose it looks okay, definetly better than a solid, bolded subject line.


:. Saturday, June 26, 2004 at 12:52:04 AM EST

Tonight my dad took me, my sister, Alex and Ron to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Let me say that this is required viewing.

I can't really summarive the film, nor do I want to. Rather, you, the loyal reader, should go out and see it for yourself. If you are completely "behind" and in "support" of the war, you should at least hear what those in opposition have to say. After all, you may be wrong.

Oh, hail to the thief.


:. Thursday, June 24, 2004 at 09:45:58 PM EST

Tonight I went to Stir Crazy with my sister and my dad. Let me tell you, that restaurant is fucking awesome. Once you decide what you sort of noodle and such you want, you get to put whatever you want together and hand it to a chef to be cooked up. I got Shang Hai noodles with traditional Chinese sauce and tons of vegetables and my favorite, tofu cubes. Heh. After dinner, we had banana tempura with vanilla ice crea... a' hubbaduh hubbaduh. My God, was that the best.

Anyway, that was my night thus far. I'm about to call Alex and invite him over to watch Friends with me. Its almost like having real one's :)

On that note, goodnight loyal readers.

Update: Instead of watching Friends, we actually watched this great English show, Coupling. It was very funny, I suggest that you all make it your personal mission to see it, heh.


:. Tuesday, June 22, 2004 at 01:38:34 AM EST

The kind actions of a certain blcknight on irc.2600.net have brought me Gmail. Check out my inbox, exciting, ay? After a while, I will recieve several invites that I can send to whomever I want. When those arrive, I'll be sure to send them along to my friends. Leave a comment if you'd like one, first come, first serve.

If you don't want to leave a comment, you can always email me at hello.ateam@gmail.com :)


:. Monday, June 21, 2004 at 02:58:21 PM EST

In an effort to futher surround myself with emotion-numbing technology, two nights ago I began building another computer. The case is quite the piece of shit, however, it does its job and it does it well. See, I'm installing Windows XP on it to make one good DVD ripping/video encoding whore. "But Derek, but Derek, if Linux is soooo great and if Windows is that terrible, then why don't you just use it!" Assuming you've asked this question, here is my answer: The Linux distributions I can stand are hobbyist. It takes quite a bit of time to get a Linux system capable of ripping DVDs and encoding video. On the other hand, that same goal can be reached much quicker on Windows. Do not be mistaken, quicker does not mean better. This post isn't one to go into that, though.

Anyway, the machine is pretty much built, with the exception of a hard drive. I've got a 4 GB disk in there now, however, that just won't do if I want to encode and rip. As a result, I'm heading over to my mom's later to pick up my 40 GB disk. So here's the computer I'm naming Simple and Clean...

• Intel Pentium III 800 MHz processor
• 128 MB PC-2100 RAM (to be upgraded to 256)
• Samsung 4x DVD-ROM drive
• 40 GB hard drive
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

Okay, so there's been better, but I'm not complaining, especilly since I had all of the parts lying around. Feel free to donate hardware :)

Update: The machine is up! Check out this screenshot.


:. Saturday, June 19, 2004 at 02:55:17 PM EST

Last night was my dad's girlfriend Carol's birthday. I didn't think I should ask her how old she was, but none the less, Happy Birthday! To celebrate we went down to the beach over where they live in Boynton to hang out and listen to the band. The band was lame, but the bass player was good. He had a 6 string. The most important and humorous part of the night was the large, perhaps drunk, man dancing. My dad said that the Dancing Man, as I've named him, is there everytime the band comes. I managed to take a couple of pictures of him in action...

  

I thought for sure he'd have a heart attack. Oh yeah, and excuse the low quality pictures, my dad's Verizon phone sucks.


:. Friday, June 18, 2004 at 07:02:25 PM EST

Allow me to make reference to when over a week ago EB tried to rip me off. Like I said in my angry post of the past, I could easily make $50 putting them up for auction on eBay. Well, I underestimated my profits. I, in fact, made $56 :)

I just thought that I'd let everyone know that it is possible to not be bent over and raped by evil corporations like EB.

In other news, I improved the comment system to post your comments almost instantly. Before, you may have noticed that after posting a comment, the window went blank and then refreshed, showing your newly added comment. These are just little ways I show you all how much I care about you.

Update: How could I forget! I got my new motherboard and power supply, meaning I have a working computer again! WHOOOO! See the bottom of the site for the latest screenshot.


:. Wednesday, June 16, 2004 at 11:52:20 PM EST

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, those greasy, fast food French fries have been declared a fresh vegetable by the USDA. Still not convinced the decision was insane? See below...

VS   Here we have both a regular strawberry and a strawberry covered in chocolate. I see the chocolate to be the same as a French fry's batter. Do you consider the above dessert to be a "fresh fruit?"

VS   While neither fo these look that appetizing to me, I can clearly see that they are different. One makes you fat (the fries) and the other merely takes up space in your stomach (the potato). Perhaps Reagan is back from the grave. After all, it was his administration who put forward that ketchup should be classified as a vegetable.

:. Sunday, June 13, 2004 at 12:37:39 PM EST

Last night was Felicia's Birthday party at P.I.S. I can't believe she is already 16 years old... they grow up so fast. Heh. The only band that I can recall playing was Rome is Burning, and they were really good, I thought. I'm sure she wrote all about it at http://www.fuhleeshuh.com.

Anyway, next time you see Felicia on the street, tell her Happy Birthday! :)

Update: I fixed all of the spacing and tiny font problems. While the font here is still small, I believe it looks much better now. Also, with my previous font configuration, bolded text was not displayed in bold. Lastly, I added three nifty things to the bottom of the site, just scroll down. Yes, they're accurate. Enjoy..


:. Friday, June 11, 2004 at 10:25:38 PM EST

You know those times when you take a good look at yourself and find you don't like what you see? Maybe you don't. I've been thinking about myself quite a bit lately. I've found everything left with one person. I don't have enough friends. I don't know if I have any friends. Its Friday night, and I've spent too many just like this since school ended to see myself as anything but a loser, for lack of better terms. That's not to say that there aren't any better terms. Anyway, whose up for another fireside story with Derek and what he did today? Good.

This afternoon, Alex's little brother Nick and I traded our video game systems. I my Playstation 2 and he his Gamecube. Please don't yell at me claiming PS2 is better. I hardly play videogames these days, but the bore I've been subject to lately demands that I pick up that controller and gaze into my illuminated television until I fall asleep. All of the good games for Sony's 128 bit wonder have passed. I've been a sucker for Nintendo's seemingly childish games all my life, so the trade made perfect sense. While Nick and I exchanged consoles, we kept the games to ourselves. I decided that I'd bring whichever I had lying around to Electronics Butique to trade in. I've always known that EB was a rip off, no matter which end of the table you're on, but tonight really fucking did it. For my five amazing games, they offered $15. Fifteen fucking dollars! As they scanned the barcodes on the game cases and read off ridiculously low prices like "$.75" and "$.50", I sounded off with a loud "Jesus!" I may have gone over the edge with that one. Actually, no, I believe they've gone over the edge. I know for a fact that I can sell my five games for at least $50 total on eBay. I warn you all, never trade in your used video games to EB, EVER! Instead, start an eBay account, take a few pictures of your game and create an auction. What the fuck kind of name is Electronics Butique anyway? Pieces of shit... As you may or may not know, the PS2 has a built in DVD player, which is nice. The Gamecube, however, does not, so I figured that while I was at the mall being subjected to an ass fucking attempt by the employees at EB I should go to Sears' electronics department and pick up one of their dirt cheap $40 DVD players. Just as Lady Luck would have it, they were sold out of those players. Even further pissed off, I realized that I wasted nearly an hour upsetting myeslf. One last potential joy remained, though. Earlier today, Alex told me that he was working until close at Chick-fil-A in the food court. Meeting him there and walking home together laughing and being 16 would have been fun, except the other workers said he wasn't working. I felt as if I either lost my mind, or was just being picked on by God. You know, God, that bully of a kid who sits on top of his antpile of a planet he created with a magnifying glass, torturing us. Yes, that's the divine one I speak so fondly of. Let down once again, I headed for the exit of the mall and trudged home, stopping at Alex's house along the way. His very kind mother told me they cancelled his shift today, and that she didn't know where he was. His little brother, Nick, was there, too, playing his new PS2 with his friends, having the greatest time playing as Snoop Dogg as he ran through Los Angelas with a shotgun, killing everything in site. I had nothing to show for the evening, and my Gamecube game library remains as transparent as me.

Was that not one big whine? I'm sure I will laugh at this post in the morning.

Have the safest of flights, dearest.

Update: Remember that eBay idea I had? eBay member fsckateam's auctions...


:. Wednesday, June 09, 2004 at 06:07:07 PM EST

If for some reason you were wondering about why the site has been down for the past few days, my workstation's motherboard and power supply fried and I've been using this server as my temporary workstation with the SLAX Linux Live CD. It has been quite painful, as you could imagine. In fact, I found my 40 MHz SPARCstation 10 to function better than Linux running off of a CD. I've decided to give up my temporary workstation ways and simply wait for the new motherboard and power supply to come in the mail and sneak into my sister's room to use her computer if needed.

In other news, I've spent the past few days sitting around doing nothing :) Heh, yes, now why do I have a feeling you all guessed that. Alex, Jeff and I had a little sleep over at my house two nights ago. 'Twas fun, except Jeff ate all of my food.

Today, I only worked for two and a half hours. I spent that last half hour at an emergency evacuation meeting. This meeting consisted of new employees (and interns, we have rights, too) gathering in a conference room and listening to a woman talk about how to open a door and run. Quite a waste of time, but when its time I could have been spending actually working, I don't mind.

In astrological news, Venus made a transit across the sun yesterday. Wooo!


:. Saturday, June 05, 2004 at 06:27:10 PM EST

I've decided that from now on, I'm going to write all of my dreams down. I tried doing that a long time ago for about a week, but then gave up. I think it would be interesting to read back on them someday. Anyway, I suppose I should start with last night's.

I remember that I was at home, sitting around as usual, and being surprised to find out that I forgot that I had to go to school that day and the next for my final exams. In my dream, I had been out of school for a week or so already, so you can see why it was strange. The final exams weren't the ones we already took, they were state-required, like the FCAT, except these had a name like the "General Intelligence Tests." I was up early enough to catch the bus, but for some reason everyone at my stop, with the exception of me, was able to make it onto the actual bus. The bus pulled away and I ran after it. The next thing I remember is me sitting on the curb by my stop reading some girl's notebook that was left there. It was full of notes and drawings. When I think about it, it resembles my sister's. She lets me look around at all of the weird stuff in her's. Anyway, I was able to get my dad to drive me to school, but only to find out that I arrived too late. I was told by someone, in Japanese, that I had to take the test tomorrow, however, that would mean that I wouldn't be able to take the test that was supposed to be taken tomorrow. This, for some reason, got me quite upset. I remember being really upset and depressed. I think the test had something to do with me passing or not. Who knows. Anyway, that was the dream I had last night. Strange, I know.

In other news, Friday I drove up to my mom's boyfriend's house in Jupiter. He has a nice house, but I miss stuff. I've been using his computer for the past two days, as I would probably be doing at home (not by choice, of course). That's about all I've been up to. Don't hesitate to comment on this post telling me how dumb or cool my dream idea is.


:. Thursday, June 03, 2004 at 03:27:56 PM EST

Today and yesterday all of my endless hours of formatting endless amounts of our companys old computers hard drives was paid off. We finally sold all of them to different organizations and churches. Dont suggest that I should have ghosted them, since all of the computers had different hardware types. Ive pretty much finished everything I have to do for today. I get to leave at 4 pm, so I only have a little while left, whoo.

In other, sadder, news, my workstations power supply and motherboard fried. I shouldnt have tried what I did. I have extra power supplies, so thats no problem, however, I dont have any decent mobos lying around, so that will set me back $100.


:. Tuesday, June 01, 2004 at 11:27:14 AM EST

I just found out that I don't have work today, rather, I do tomorrow and Thursday. Today is sort of the first real day of summer vacation. You see, the weekend doesn't count because we would have had that time off anyway, and yesterday, Monday, was Memorial Day, which we also would have had off anyway. So you see, today is the first day of summer. Grrreeat.

Yesterday, I went with Katy to the mall, Barnes & Noble and then her house. Yes, that's what I did. I suggest that if you've never tasted Nips before that you do as soon as possible. They're really good. Like reaallyyy.


:. Sunday, May 30, 2004 at 10:01:42 PM EST

Tis the second day of summer. I fear I will fall into a habbit of seeing a movie every night until school starts again. Tonight, Alex and my dad's girlfriend's son Jeff saw Super Size Me, a film about what happens when you eat nothing but McDonalds for thirty days for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Take it from him, its not a good idea.

So yes, another drunken Sunday orgie at my house. What's new. I never end up on the drinking end of the table.

I guess I'll go now. Yep. Time to go...


:. Sunday, May 30, 2004 at 01:40:10 AM EST

Tonight, Alex and I went to Muvico 20 to find out that the movie we wanted to see, The Day After Tomorrow, was sold out. As a result, we headed over to Boomers...where we road...go-karts. We did it more to pass the time rather than enjoy it.

10 pm finally arrived, so we went back to the theater. I bought a large Sprite and Reeces Pieces. Whatd'ya know, Phil was my behind-the-counter pal! I'm glad to see youngsters are taking responsibility and searching for employement. Since when is a cup of Sprite $4? Oh well. Anyway, into the theater we went. It was a good thing we got there 30 minutes early, the seats were nearly all gone. We found two in the back and sat. I don't believe I've seen so many commercials.

No matter, the movie was really good. If you don't know what its about, click the text 'The Day After Tomorrow' in the first paragraph of this post. Yes, its one of those crazy Internet hyperlinks.

We looked like giants...


:. Friday, May 28, 2004 at 09:50:19 PM EST

Nothing out of the ordinary.
The last day of school, having fun?
Good.


:. Friday, May 28, 2004 at 01:31:25 PM EST

Yes, a school year has come and gone, its amazing.

First things first; I redid the site. I decided to go with a simpler layout with a more flexible backend. There really isn't much I can't make this site do, heh.

Now, a few words about this school year... I can definetly say that this has been the best school year of my life. I've met such great people. Although I'm known for being the one who never does anything but sit in his room all night staring at his computer screen, it seems as though I've experienced so much. My grades were okay this year, I've been able to pull of a 3.25 or so. It all seemed so pointless, now that my sophomore year is over. I'm sure I'll thank myself for doing some work in high school...someday.

Today, at 11:30, when the final bell rang, this feeling of overwhelming joy took hold of my body. I let out a big scream and headed for the door. My original plan to buy confetti and throw it in the air as I ran down the hall sort of got lost somewhere between the realization that I'd never actually do that and me falling asleep last night and forgetting to go to Party City. We were told to completely clear out our lockers. I did so, gleefully throwing my stack of keepers from the first semester and SAT Prep. book in the garbage. It wasn't until I was a few feet from the bus when it came to me that I still had my locker lock with me. Good old 49. I wonder if I'll get a phone call about that, hm...

So, here I am, making my first post on the new and possibly improved backdrifts.net.

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derek comments:
meet the new poster boy for Yoohoo!
on New York 2010: IMG_0087.jpg

derek comments:
cugini! this was one of the best trips of my life. nothin' beats a long weekend at uncle frankie's upstate cabin in the catskills!
on Upstate New York 2006: CIMG0850.jpg



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